Chinese New year

So here is my list of ideas and things we are going to do to celebrate

A brief video on the topic from the History Channel

We are starting with making a paper dragon, just his head. Every time we learn something new they write it on a piece of paper and fold that into another section. The more they learn, the bigger their dragon. Whoever has the longest dragon at the end wins a special prize

 

Red envelopes found at World Market filled with Chinese chocolate coins, also found at World Market. Or you could make your own with this pattern from Activity Village.

Food Ideas

 The local Asian market sells some really good frozen dumplings

Scallion pancakes

BBQ Pork

And a case of mandarin oranges

More info on 10 foods that are supposed to bring good luck

 

Books and Education

The book World Holidays: A Watts guide for Children has a great section on the holiday

 The story of why the rat is first in the Chinese Zodiac

Look through 100 Cities of the World at Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai. Then they are going to fill out a page on each city. The page has a map to pinpoint the location, three interesting facts, and a place to draw an interesting feature. 

Digital Chinese Fairy Tale book

Word Search and Questions to answer (found on page 5)

Topmarks is another site with a lot of info

Fun and Games

 Making Paper Lanterns

Chop Stick Game

Brush Painting

Learn to draw their year symbol

Paper doll girls and boy

Origami Dragon (and lots of other great direction)

Chinese Knot, very pretty, very complicated

Other Stuff 

Vacation Photos someone sent me

Gung hay fat choy!!

Christmas Around the World Festival

Our homeschooling group has Christmas around the world festival with out Christmas party.

We chose Colonial American customs to go along with our study of the American Revolution. 

Small samples of Colonial Peanut Soup as served in the King's Arms Tavern

And other tasty treats consisted of Shrewsbury cakes 

and Williamsburg Orange Cake ( added cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice)

And I add a drop of rose water to my cookies

Spiced Apple Rice Krispies

These where supposed to look like apples. I didn't really get that far cause I didn't have the right decorations and I was feeling a little lazy about it all.  

You can see what they are supposed to look like at "Everday Mom", since thats where I got the idea in the first place

4 Tbsp. Butter

10 oz marshmallows

8 oz. rice krispy cereal

3 packets Alpine Spiced Cider Mix (Or other powdered apple cider mix)

Red food coloring

Melt the butter over medium heat. Add the marshmallows and stir until melted and smooth. Stir in the apple packets and food coloring. Stir in the cereal and mix well.

Butter your hands and shape into balls. Decorate as desired and enjoy!

Art for Kids - Week 2 - Egypt

I decided to post lesson plans at the start of the week, so

We will start by looking through the Egyptian section in The History Art. My goal is to point out three things about Egyptian art

1. Hieroglyphs
2. The way the Egyptians did not forshorten and instead painted everything from a side angle
3. And the Egyptian eyes painted with kohl

Start by painting their eyes to look Egyptian. Don't forget to take pictures to file in their notebooks

Activity 1
For Girls - Nefertiti hats - I cut a 22 x 28 piece of poster board in half and let the girls each paint it however they wanted. When it dried I rolled it so the bottom fit their heads and the top was slightly wider to resemble Nefertitis hat. I used hot glue to hold it together and then wrapped a ribbon around the middle and used a gold paint pen to draw the design down the middle. Or you could use a hot glue gun to glue gold ribbon in place.

For Boys - Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt - Cut the bottom, handle, and top off a clorox jug. Use an old fashioned shaped 1 quart plastic milk (The ones shaped like bowling pins) container for the center part. Fasten to the back of the milk jug with hot glue. Use a strip of red paper that is curled at the end for the front part.

Make sure the outer crown is red and the inner part is white





Activity 2:
Look through several hieroglyph books and then give them this page:
They fill in the lines with hieroglyphs and can color the pictures

Activity 3: Egyptian Cartouche
Use clay in a tan\sand color and form them into oblong shapes with a bit of a lip around the outer edge. Using toothpicks, have them carve their names or just their initials into the clay. Poke a hole in the top before baking so you can attach them to a piece of twine for a necklace.

Similar to this,





Activity 4:
This is quite similar to activity 1, using poster board cut out a large circle with a neck sized hole in the middle. Have them color it to look like a collar necklace and use string or ribbon to tie it in place. Googling "Egyptian Collar Necklace" will bring up several designs for ideas




While looking for ideas I ran across these fun web sites

This on takes you through two craftmans shops based on Egyptians drawings
http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/trade/explore/main.html

This one provides more in depth information on the different crafts of the time
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/egypt/art/egyptart.htm

Write your own name in hieroglyphs
http://www.kidzone.ws/cultures/egypt/hieroglyph.htm

Next week we will be studying Greece.

Art History for Young Kids - Week 1 - Pre-Historic Art

So as most of you you know I homeschool my kids. As an art enthusiast this had to include Art History. There are programs for math, reading, writing, science, history, and geography, all age appropriate for grade school kids. But not Art History.

So I wrote my own.

Check back each week on the new "Art For Kids" tab and you can see what each week entails.

This week is the beginning, Pre-Historic Art

We looked through EH Gombrich's "Story of Art" (My old Art 101 text book) and saw early European cave drawings, then we went to Youtube and took a tour through several of the caves. I also explained to them what the depictions where (historical records and not "just" art)

Now for the hands on part:

Activity 1: I took this picture and enlarged it to fit an 8 1/2 x 11 page
Then we took these figures and glued them on to our cave walls and made our own cave drawings.

If you look at the three icons you will note they are different styles..

• The men are kinds neutral, though they lean slightly to a more American Indian style
• The Horse is from the caves in Southern France and
• The Bull is in the style of the caves in Spain

Activity 2: Then I took a pieces of brown velour and cut out "animal skins" and let them color on them with fabric markers. All the while reminding them art then was for telling stories and recording history, so they had to tell a story in their drawings.

Activity 3 - Painting with MUD, this link also has a clip about how the caves where found that kids will enjoy
http://www.kinderart.com/arthistory/cavepainting.shtml

Next week finds us in Egypt, so stay tuned...

Homeschooling

My sisters friend made this video and originally posted it his Homeschooling blog
Type H Personalities