Frontier Crafts

September 29th 2007

I can't believe that we have just finished our sixth week of school. My how time flies when you are having fun. Yes, we have our share of challenging days. We have been hit especially hard with them this past week. I have had to take time out to clip and prune problem areas that I have seen in myself and with my children. It is so easy for us to find fault or to see character defects in our children but when God sheds His light on us we begin to see ourselves as well. We have really working this week on our reactions. We have no control over how others may treat us but we do have control in how we respond.

This is our last week on the Konos unit Resourcefulness: Frontier Life. There just is so much to do in this unit that we could probably go on for another one but next week we will be out of town. We are tagging along with my hubby to Monterey for a work related conference. The kids and I will do some sight seeing and some mild school work.

This week our focus was frontier crafts. We made homemade soap, quilting, made a musical instrument and a Jumping Jack wooden doll. Here are some pictures and how to.

This is a simple craft we found in a book called A Pioneer Sampler by Barbara Greenwood. Take a large can. Use a hammer and nail to make one hole at the bottom of the can. Tie a string. Measure and cut. Secure with a knot at the can end and the other with a pencil. You are now ready to play your homemade fiddle.

The next craft I had my oldest son make. The idea came again from the book The Pioneer Sampler. We made patterns for a Jumping Jack doll on a piece of white scratch paper. Then we took those patterns and traced them on to a thin sheet of wood such as balsa wood. After each piece was cut. I helped my son drill a hole into each one. We then used a brad to attach each piece together. After each piece was put in it's proper place it looked like a jointed puppet. A short string was cut to attach the left/ right shoulders together and the same was done for both legs. A long string was attached to the upper and lower string. I will have to post another picture next time for all to see.

My daughter learned to make a nine patch. I had her trace nine pieces and cut them out using a 4 x4 cardboard square. I pinned and traced the sewing lines. She sewed them altogether. Here is her first finished square.

You can tell she loves the color purple.

We also made homemade soap this week. I was a bit lazy. I ended up buying a kit from Michael's craft store. The soaps were very easy to make and they even had stamps to make a design on each bar.

We had a fun and busy week again. Tomorrow we will host an old fashion Harvest Festival here at our home. The kids will be able to present the stuff they have learned and show off their projects too. We will also have food and games for the kids. I will post more later. I should have plenty more pictures to post. I'm looking forward to snapping some pix of the kids bobbing for apples.

The books we read this week are:

Dandelions by Eve Bunting

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Trouble River by Betsy Byars (Chip)

Kirsten goes to School-An American Girl Book (Coco)

Frontier Living

September 23, 2007

Today is the first day of fall. I just love fall. I enjoy the colors of the changing leaves, the home cooked meals and the cooler days. Here in California it is a rare treat to see the changing of the leaves. It is not unusual to see yellow or green leaves here in fall. Red and orange ones happen when Christmas time is upon us. Hopefully, we will have cooler days and we may see them earlier this year.

Our family is enjoying the Frontier unit. There is just so many crafts and ideas to do with this one. The possibilities are endless. This week we learned how the people who lived during this time of the year ate. How did they store and prepare their food. The kids had fun shaking cream into butter. Baba was surprised to see little chunks of butter inside his jar. It was so cute to watch him shake his jar because he would get his whole body involved into it. We also tried to dry out apples. I had Coco prepare the apples by washing them and squeezing lemons to use for the apples. We don't have an apple peeler at home. I was it. I peeled the apples they ate all the discarded peelings and broken apple rings. We dried two patches of them. One was dried the old fashion way by hanging them to dry next to a window and the other dried in a dehydrator. The kids noticed two things that the apples in the dehydrator took less time and the apples hung up shrank and curled up. Both were a treat to eat and would love for me to make more real soon!!! The kids also got to make johnny cake or as some people called it "journey cake". Even with butter and honey on the cake they didn't care for it too much. They asked why they called it cake when it didn't look or taste like cake. To drink we made a drink called "switchel". It tastes like a flat ginger ale. It was very sweet. Too sweet for my taste buds. Here is a sample meal eaten on a journey...

On Tuesday the kids worked on their display boards for the end unit party. They had a lot of fun and creativity with this one. I gave them a large piece of cardboard. They need to make a landscape for their log, sod houses and covered wagon. They made dolls out of wooden pegs found at the craft store. Here are some pictures to share.....




These pictures don't capture all the creativity that the kids put into these boards. By the time they were done they added shavings from their rabbits to use for the animals. Luckily we had a bunch of plastic farm animals. They were very resourceful. Coco even drew a mud pen for her pigs to play in and a pond for her ducks. I love moments like this when the kids use their creative juices to explore and create.

God bless you with a great week. I look forward to sharing more photos and project ideas with you next time.

Our Fourth Week of School

We began our next unit study this week.
We are now studying about Resourcefulness: Frontier Life. Coco is very excited because she loves Little House on the Prairie. On Monday we started reading our first Little House book, Little House in the Big Woods and we discussed what it meant to be resourceful, i.e. the differences between natural and unnatural resources. Pioneers had to be courageous and resourceful to prepare and to travel on their long journeys. We learned that these journeys would take five to six months. Timing was critical to avoid snow, muddy landscapes and a lack of grass for their cattle to feed upon. I had the kids list the things that were necessary to pack on their wagon for the journey. They thought of everything from today's standards. I had to back up and explain that they were travelers from the 1800's. What would they need to bring and who would they want in their wagon train group. They caught on.


We did a lot of building projects this week. The first one was to have the kids construct a covered wagon. I didn't purchase a pre-made kit. I wanted the kids to make one from things we already had on hand. The only thing that I needed to purchase was the spray paint and the bottom box for the bottom wagon part. I picked up some truffle type boxes sold at a party store. They cost just $0.55 each. They cut off the top portion. Then I had them glue on wooden sticks. After the sticks dried I sprayed it brown for them. For the tent hoops we used pipe cleaners. The kids taped them in place. Here is a closeup view.
Once the pipe cleaners were in place we glued a piece of muslin on top. After it dried I had the kids stitched it closed.

On Thursday, our co-op day, we made two different types of pioneer homes. A log cabin and a sod house. We talked about living in each and if they lived in a place that had trees vs. not having trees. To make the sod houses it was a very messy undertaking. Coco loved to get messy with the cotton balls and glue. Baba even did a great job making one. I found the idea on the Internet. It said to use Popsicle sticks and clay to build a simple frame structure, which we did on Monday, leaving it to dry. After the frame was dry and set. I had the kids dip cotton balls into glue and make a wall on each side. It said to make a flour and water paste. I was short on flour so we just used glue. For the roof the kids just glued tongue depressor sticks together. I still need to spray their houses brown. Here are a few pictures of them:

Here are some pictures of the log homes that the kids made. We just made them out of brown construction paper tubes cut to size. Baba was very good at rolling the construction paper tubes and I taped them in place.

On Wednesday, the kids started up again in AWANA. Here are some pictures of them in their uniforms with their books. They were very excited. Chip is now in his second year in T & T, Coco is in her last year of Sparks and Baba in his last year of Cubbies.

As if our week wasn't busy enough...........on Friday afternoon we went to the local fair to find all the things we have been learning about this week. We found so many things there that we are going back next Thursday. Here is a cute picture of the kids.

Here is a list of the books that we are currently reading:

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Clara Barton by Matthew Grant

Trouble River by Betsy Byars (Chip)

Meet Kirsten by Janet Shaw (Coco)

If you Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine.

Our Third Week of School

Saturday September 8, 2007

The kids and I continued our study learning about the five senses. On Tuesday, we learned the sense of smell. We learned that a child has a far better sense of smell than an adult. I tested their little noses with different things. I used a cotton ball sprayed with perfume, a lemon, strawberry, cedar shavings, timothy hay, a cotton ball dipped in vinegar, coffee grounds and a cotton ball dipped in vanilla. After blindfolding the kids they were to guess what each item was by smelling it. Poor Chip didn't due to well on this once his nose was stuffy. CoCo did great and figured out several of them. Baba just had fun smelling them without a blindfold on.

On Wednesday the kids learned about their tongues. Coco memorized the taste buds and their location on the tongue. We tested their taste buds with salt, lemons, lollipop and red wine vinegar. They thought the red wine vinegar was disgusting. "YUCK MOM!" They loved the sweet part of their tongue.


On Thursday we learned about the sense of touch. Did you know that there are over 12,000 nerve cells in a 3/4 of an inch of skin. The kids and I were truly amazed by this. There are heat/cold and pain sensors. I tested their sensor nerves by blindfolding them and having them place one fist in ice water and the other in tap water. They both knew that each one was different. One bowl was colder than the other. I also blindfolded them and had them touch different things such as velvet and sandpaper and describe how it felt. It was a great way to use adjectives. We also fingerpainted. They loved this one. My kids just enjoy getting messy. I have to admit I loved this too as a kid. I was always in the mud making mud pies in the backyard and playing with worms.




After the touch experiments were done the kids cooked up a fun five senses lunch. To make this I had the kids roll out some cookie dough, trace and cut out the shape of their hand. This represented the sense of touch. They also added sprinkles for texture.

Then I had the kids take a flour tortilla and spread peanut butter all over it. They used bananas and raisins for eyes, a walnut for a nose, licorice for a mouth and cheerios for ears. The kids had fun creating and eating their finished creations.

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Here is a little fun project I found on the internet to do with Baba. For the hands we traced them out of sandpaper. The mouth was licorice. The nose was a cotton ball dipped in perfume. The eyes were the jiggly crafting type. Here is a finished picture of it.

Here are the books we read this week:

Smelling & Tasting by Alvin & Virginia Silverstein

Look, Listen, Taste, Touch & Smell by Pamela Nettleton

Body Detectives: A Book About The 5 Senses by Rita Gelman

Taste by Maria Rius

Our week of studying the EYE....

We have almost every eye color represented in our home. All we are missing is a brown. The eye itself is a fascinating and marvelous creation by our Heavenly Father. Did you know that there are 59 Bible verses on the eye alone. God had a lot to say about the eye and its' importance. Just like He did about the tongue and heart.


This is our second week learning about the five senses. Last week the kids had fun constructing the parts of the ear with household stuff. This week we labeled diagrams of the eye, played games, learned about Louis Braille, constructed an eye with food and yes we even dissected a cow eye. All of us were quite squeamish at first about the dissection endeavor but once we gotsee the inside we were simply amazed and awestruck.



We are so glad we did not chicken out on this one. My oldest son Chip asked why do we have to dissect a cows eye why not a human eye. I tried to explain to him that many Scientist use animals to learn about their study of medicine. To use a human for this we would have to have someone killed. I think he was just trying to reason his way out of the dissection. Nope, it didn't work....


Here is a picture of our eyes made out of food. I got the idea from my walk again that morning. I had heard about using an orange and an olive from something I read. The other items I came up with after praying to God to lead in this matter. He gave me some inspiration and the picture of it speaks for itself. To make this peel one orange. Take a green olive and insert it to one end of the orange. Use a toothpick to keep stable. At the other end insert a cut straw piece. The straw piece is the optic nerve of the eye. Then use a small piece of plastic wrap and place it over the olive side. This is the cornea. Lastly, take the thin type of licorice ropes (three per piece). Cut six of them and wrap from the plastic wrap side to the other end. The licorice ropes are the muscles in your eye. The human eye has six muscles. These muscles help us to move our eye in all directions even to roll them. We learned that cows only have four muscles. They are not able to roll their eyes.

Soccer schedule also began this week for Chip. He had his first practice on Thursday. Thursdays will be kind of crazy around here with co-op, soccer and ballet practice. Ballet practice doesn't end until 7:15 and I'm trying to figure out when Coco and I will be able to eat dinner. I don't want to have to eat fast food every Thursday night. I know we may have to in some cases when my hubby works late and wont be able to pick up the boys for me. Oh, we shall see...

This weekend is Labor Day weekend and the high temperatures are suppose to continue until Tuesday. Yesterday, on our outings it was 101 degrees at 2:00. This heat wave wreaks havoc on my head and my ability to sleep because it is so hot. I can't wait for cooler weather days!

The books we read for this week if you are interested in picking them up at your library are:

Helen Keller by Margaret Davidson

Me and My senses by Jan Sweeney

Look at your Eyes by Paul Showers

My Eyes by Kathy Furgarg

The Magic School Bus Explorers the Five Senses by Joanne Cole

The Blind Colt by Glen Rounds

We also read articles from the internet about Louis Braille, color blindness, myopia, and hyperropia and why are tears are salty.