Fall is Here at Fun School Friday!

Fall has definitely made her early appearance here down in the Valley. If that is not the case in your little neck of the woods, feel free to adapt these ideas to whatever season has taken up residence where you live.

Art Challenge: Stained Glass Candle Holders

Materials:
Clear Votive candle cups
Tissue paper in fall colors (NOT metallic tissue)
School glue or PVC glue (Elmer's works well)
Wide tipped artist brushes
Votive or tea light candles

Directions: Tear the tissue paper into small pieces (not confetti, mind you.) Dip the brush into the glue and "paint" the tissue paper bits onto the outside of your votive cup. Cover the outside surface, overlapping the pieces of tissue paper to create interesting color effects. Allow the glue to dry. Insert candle and light it. The candlelight should create a "stained glass" effect when shining through your colored votive cup. (NOTE: NEVER EVER EVER leave your children alone with an open flame!!) You can use these in your window at night, or as a decoration for a table for dinner, or during prayer/devotional time.

Language Challenge: Read, and perhaps memorize or dramatize, some great seasonal poetry. Suggestions:
Robert Frost' s "After Apple Picking," "Gathering Leaves" or "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
John Keats's "Ode to Autumn"
Emily Dickinson's "Autumn"
Emily Brady's "Leaves"
John Updike's "September"

Nature Challenge: Get ready for autumn's natural bounty with an Autumn Watch Guide from Nature Detectives. (For those of you who don't get much Autumn, of for whom this time of year may be Spring, a quick search of the site may help you find nature activities more appropriate to your location and climate.)

Cooking Challenge: Get the whole family involved in making a big pot of your favorite chili, soup or stew. How about baking an apple pie? Or making apple butter or applesauce in the crock pot? If you haven't got any favorite fall-ish recipes, here's one of our family favorites:

Crock pot Cider

1 gallon apple cider or natural apple juice
1 quart cranberry juice
several pieces of cinnamon stick
whole cloves

Place everything in your crock pot. Cook on low until heated through. If needed, stir a little honey, maple syrup or brown sugar in your cider to sweeten it.

Musical Challenge: Listen to Vivaldi's "Autumn" from the Four Seasons. Or, if you prefer, Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag." Classics for Kids has the music plus an activity sheet and info on Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" for those of you who HAVE to make it schoolish.

Fun School Friday #3 (on a Tuesday)

Took last week off for Labor Day Holiday.....

Math Challenge: PENTOMINOES!! (I love these!! ) This is a printable .pdf file with a set of pentominoes, and page after page of puzzles and challenges to use with your set.

Language Challenge: Write I Am poems:
I Am

I am (two special characteristics)
I wonder (something you are actually curious about)
I hear (an imaginary sound)
I see (an imaginary sight)
I want (an actual desire)
I am (the first line of the poem restated)

I pretend (something you actually pretend to do)
I feel (a feeling about something imaginary)
I touch (an imaginary touch)
I worry (something that really bothers you)
I cry (something that makes you very sad)
I am (the first line of the poem repeated)

I understand (something you know is true)
I say (something you believe in)
I dream (something you actually dream about)
I try (something you really make an effort about)
I hope (something you actually hope for)
I am (the first line of the poem repeated)

Art Challenge: Copy your I Am poems onto poster board. Decorate the posters with photos, magazine cut-outs, drawings, stickers, etc. that either illustrate the poem, or that show more of who you are.

Nature Challenge: Blindfold Explorations. Bring a blindfold, or have child keep eyes shut tightly. Find a sunny woodland glade with interesting places and plants to explore. Lead your child to each spot, carefully taking them around any obstacles or holes. Ask them to touch, listen or smell, depending on what’s there to explore. See if they can tell when they move from the sunny spots to the shade, or from grass to soil.

Fun School Friday #2

Math Challenge: Dr. Mike's Pizza Cutting Puzzle

Language Challenge: Tongue Twisters!! Learn and try some new ones, then have the dc try to make up at least one of their own. If you don't know any new ones, or need some inspiration, here's a link.

Art Challenge: Summer Sunsets - Take watercolor paper and have the dc "wash" the entire paper with stripes of wet-on-wet shades of yellow, red, orange, pink, green, purple - the colors of a sunset. While the paper dries, have them draw a house, trees, cityscape, etc. on black construction paper with a pencil. Cut out the scene using the OUTSIDE edges of the drawings only - to create a silhoutte effect. After the paper is dry, glue your foreground scene to the colorful sunset background.

Cooking Challenge: Smoothies - Buy a large container of vanilla or plain yogurt. Add frozen berries, frozen peach slices, frozen banana bits, frozen watermelon or cantaloupe, or any fresh or frozen fruit of your choice. Whirl it all up in the blender until smooth. Blend in some fruit juice if its too thick. Add a little peanut butter or chocolate syrup, if you like. Be creative. Try new flavors!

Make some fun!

Fun School Friday #1

Fun School Friday #1

Art Challenge - Become a shoe fashion designer and design the latest in trendy footwear. It must be colorful, creative, AND wearable. Use art paper, colored pencils, markers, glitter, feathers, whatever. After the shoe has been created, write or narrate a description of what it is, who would wear it and where it would be worn. ABCTeach has a shoe shape book for teaching counting by 2's. The last page of the .pdf file has a few blank shoes on it, for those with younger children who may want a pattern for this activity.

Language Challenge - Chart stories Use dice to determine which squares on each chart to use. For older children, you can specify a page, word or paragraph limit or a time limit. For younger children, they may prefer to draw out their story, or add illustrations to a story you write as they dictate.

Math Challenge - You have $3 to spend at the bead shop. Purple beads cost 25 cents each, blue ones cost 10 cents each, and pink ones cost 5 cents each. Using all three colors of beads, you must create a necklace with a repeating pattern. Can you create a necklace that has mostly blue beads, begins and ends with a pink bead, and uses up all of your bead budget? Show the math problems, and write or draw a description of your finished necklace.

Science Challenge - Got this idea from the Think! blog
Materials:
2 12-inch rulers
3 sheets 8 1/2 x 11 copy/printer paper
5 pennies
2 pieces of tape, each 3 inches long
Directions: Create a free standing tower using ALL of the materials. Set a time limit of 5 or 10 minutes. (NOTE: We don't have enough rulers, so we'll use chopsticks instead.)

Geography Challenge - Print off or make up an alphabet puzzle page. (To make one, simply write each letter of the alphabet down the left-hand side of the paper, one letter per line.) Give child an atlas. Find one place - country, city, county, state, province, lake, mountain, park, river, etc. - that starts with each letter of the alphabet. You can customize this to match your geography studies by only using a map of the location you're focusing on, or by specifying place names have to be rivers, cities, etc.

Make some fun next Friday!

Hey Howdy Hello!!

Welcome to Fun School Fridays!!

In an effort to make our homeschooling fresh, fun and less prone to boredom and burnout, a few years ago I decided to put away the books, and ease off the hard-core readin', writin, and 'rithmetic once a week. Fun School Fridays was the result! Every Friday, my dc and I perticipate in fun, usually creative, learning. This blog was created at the request of some FSF fans who wanted a more permanent place for my ideas.

If your homeschool needs a boost, or if you're just a parent tired of hearing "I'm bored" or "Mom, what can we do?" then Fun School Friday is the place to find fun, creative ideas to add some spark to your week or that rainy weekend afternoon.

I take my FSF adventures with my ds Mr. T, and my dd Miss K. Mr. T is currently 8yo and just starting 3rd grade. Miss K is 10 and starting 5th grade. If your dc are younger or older, feel free to modify our FSF ideas to suit their needs, abilities, and your situation.

FSF activities take many forms. Some are for outside, outdoors learning. Some are geared to the kitchen table. Others are best completed on the floor. Some are messy. Some involve cooking. There's art, science, math and language activities, too. You never know where we'll land on a Fun School Friday.

Not all of my ideas are original. I glean resources from websites, books and other homeschoolers. If I know it/have it written down, I'll post a link or citation to the original source. Keep in mind, though, that I don't always have the original source cited in my Mama's Book of Ideas. If you see something that you know is yours, or that you know where it came from and want to let me know, drop me a line, or add a comment to the relevant post.

I plan to post our plans one week ahead, so watch every Friday for next week's activities!

Come along and make some fun!!