Sewing Kit Additions

Remember the sewing kits I made for my kids last year? They really loved making the little dog I had put in there from Little Family Fun, so this Christmas I'm giving them a sewing kit add on! I made 6 more felt animals for them to make. (They each will get all 6). This was one really easy present to make, I only had to cut out all the pieces and put them in a bag!  Here's Rebekah's finished dog.

Week 16, MFW Adventures & K

This week Caleb decided to write his own stories, there are two on this page.  He did this all on his own, not during school time.  Of course, I encouraged it, and didn't correct him at all.  (Although, I just noticed I did write the correct spelling of "of"...)  I really want him to have a love of reading and writing.  And below is a picture of our history books this week.  I actually remembered to take a picture before we went back to the library!  We learned about Rhode Island and Vermont, and then spent a couple days on Daniel Boone.

Here are the state sheets Caleb did.  We also tried some real maple syrup, which was a big hit with everyone!

I dropped the ball a little bit with our science this week.  We are using Science With Air (Science Activities), pages 6-9 this week.  We talked about what happens when air gets cold or hot, which makes different weather.  I wasn't prepared for the experiments, so I quick made one up.  We took balloons filled with warm air outside to see if they shrank in the cold air (they did, but only a little).  Thankfully, I had gotten several weather books from the library that we read too.

English and spelling were normal this week.  In math, Caleb was introduced to multiplication!  It's only a quick introduction, but he's doing good with it.  Next week we'll be introducing division, then on to some easier topics like money and time.  We still review addition and subtraction facts every day, and he's definitely getting better at those.  He's about halfway through Singapore 1B, looks like I'll be ordering the level 2 books soon.

Rebekah's cruising right along in Kindergarten.  This week was the letter I, which stands for insects.  We learned "I am a wise child, so I work hard." (just like the ants!)

We read lots of insect books!

And then we made peanut butter honey balls!  (Bees make honey, so we had to try it!)  I mixed peanut butter, honey, oatmeal, ground flaxseed, and a bit of powdered sugar.  I rolled them in more powdered sugar so they wouldn't be so messy.  Yum!

Linking up with:

Week 15, MFW Adventures & K

I'm a little late getting our weekly update posted.  The end of this pregnancy has been wearing me out!  I found a unit study about simple machines, so we learned about pulleys, levers and a few others.  Above, the kids had a great time testing out how a pulley (our broom) works!  Below, we made a lever out of rulers and rubber bands.

And then we looked at a lot of pictures of machines and tried to figure out what kind they were.  It was a fun, simple unit study.

In our state study, we finished New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, and North Carolina.

They really liked learning about the Statue of Liberty.  It was really funny to imagine a 4 foot long nose!

We've received 10 postcards from around the US so far!  Thank you to those that have sent, or are still sending one to us!

Here is Caleb's English paper for the week.  This took him a couple days to complete.  He learned about describing when something happens.

And for the boy that hates writing, he decided to write a story all by himself, not during school!

And then Rebekah had to write one too!

In art, they learned about drawing with dots, and then the next picture is more color making with paint!

Rebekah finished up the letter W, which stands for water.  She's doing a great job on all her school work!

Linking up with:

Fleece Swaddle Blanket Tutorial

I made a fleece swaddle blanket for the coming baby!  I found a pink one at a garage sale this summer and just had to buy it, just in case we had a girl.  But then we found out we're having a boy, so I decided to try and copy it using a boy fabric.  The pink one is actually more like a sleep sack with wings that you use to swaddle the baby.  I happened to be shopping with a friend, and she picked up a swaddle blanket that was more like a sleeping bag with the wings.  It seemed like it would be much easier to make, so I went with the sleeping bag version.

Are you interested in making one?  Here's what I did:  I started by laying out the pink sleep sack I had and tracing it about an inch bigger.  If you don't have a sleep sack to trace, you could use a sleeper to get the length and then just add wings.  I actually traced the bottom part a little bigger than 1 inch, but I wish I wouldn't have.  The finished swaddler seems a little big to me.  Although there should be plenty of room for him to grow!

Below are my cut out pieces.  The smaller piece is for the front of the sleep sack.  The bottom of it is the exact same dimensions as the larger piece, but then it extends up a few inches.

Time to start sewing!  First, sew the front piece to the bottom piece.  My seam starts and stops at the corner of the large bottom piece.

Next, it's time to make the bottom of the sack look like a bag.  With the sack still inside out, adjust the corner so that the side and bottom seam are laying on top of each other.  Measure 2 inches from the corner and sew a seam across the corner (as shown below).

Trim the excess fabric.

Flip it right side out.  The picture below shows what the bottom looks like now.  Next, hem the raw edges, all the way around the wings and the front flap.

I used 3/4 inch strips of velcro, but the pink swaddler I have uses 2 inch strips.  I decided to use 3/4 inch because of the price difference, $0.84 vs. $5.44!  My velcro strips are probably about 6-8 inches long, I didn't measure them, and they are not all exactly the same.  I sewed them on so they would be a criss cross pattern when secured.  I thought this would be much better to swaddle the baby, and can be adjusted as the baby grows.

And that's it!  All ready for a real baby.

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Week 14, MFW Adventures & K

We skipped ahead to week 14 this week.  In our curriculum, week 13 is a special 3 day Thanksgiving unit, so we'll come back to it in a few weeks.  So, we continued on in our state study with Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and South Carolina.  We are attempting to collect post cards from every state. I've been sending out requests to family, friends, and fellow homeschoolers.  The kids were super excited when we received 2 from Hawaii!!!  We decorated a shoe box with stickers to hold them all.

I forgot to take a picture of our library books before I took them back, but we really enjoyed Molly Bannaky, which was a book from Maryland.  We also read Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilderbefore we started reading Farmer Boy (Little House) this week.  We read about how Almanzo liked to eat popcorn in milk, and then Caleb tried to fit an entire cup of popcorn in a cup of milk.  It fit!  And he actually ate it and liked it too!  The rest of us just ate the popcorn.

In science, we've been learning about the different state birds.  Below is a picture of the kids making robin nests out of chow mien noodles, crunched up frosted mini wheats, chocolate and peanut butter.  They didn't look very much like nests, but they were yummy!

Did you know that a robin can eat 14 feet of worms a day?  That's a lot of worms!

We also made a soda bottle bird feeder and hung it on our play set outside.  It's on the left where one of the rings should be.  The kids have been watching it closely, but we haven't seen any birds yet.  Fortunately, our neighbors have several bird feeders that we can watch too!

The rest of our subjects have been challenging this week.  Let's just say, Caleb has had a bad attitude all week.  We have been doing subtraction in math, and because of all the whining, I decided to pause in our math book and just spend 2 days of working on math facts.  I was going to let him play fun games to practice them, but his attitude was so bad I decided to just print off worksheets for him.  He cranked about them yesterday, but then asked for more today!

In spelling, he did his weekly test really great... until the last word.  He couldn't remember how to write the "oo" sound for the word "rooms", so he started having a fit and saying he wasn't going to do it (more bad attitude).  Well, I flipped the paper over and made him write it 12 times instead.  The first 3 were too sloppy, so that earned him #13-15!  I don't think he'll forget this word next week!

I was actually lenient on him for English this week.  He learned about the difference between "a" and "an". He was supposed to write the sentences and fill in the blanks, but I let him just write the correct word.  We also did the days of the week.

Here are their drawings from the The Nutcracker Ballet (Step-Into-Reading, Step 3), Caleb's is first.  We listened to the dance of the flowers.

Rebekah is cruising right along with her school too.  We finished up the letter O, for octopus.  She's doing a great job with her reading!  She's been trying to find words she knows in all our library books too!

And here's an octopus project she made.  The octopus was made using her hands.

That's a wrap on this week!  I'm also linking up with: