Christmas ADVENTure

A friend of mine bought me this book last year and since then I have been excited to use it. As the Christmas season was approaching I pulled the book out and found a few of the crafts that I would like to do with my son. And since crafts are always more fun with other people, I decided to invite our friends to join in. There are many ways you could use this book as part of your Advent celebration. What I like the most is how it ties all the Christmas symbols to Jesus! Today we made sugar cone Christmas Trees with sugar cones, green frosting and m&m's. The legend tells of a man named Winfrid who was a missionary. He was the first to use the Christmas Tree as a symbol of God. Each of the points of the tree represent the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We also made Christmas Cards with Christmas Trees on them.....are you noticing a them?? This was fun and kids went home with something they could give to someone else. Here is the template. Have fun making them with your kids!

BECOME an Art Fraud Detective

Art Fraud Detective is a great way to introduce ART in a FUN way. We use this book once a week as part of our school and Ryan loves it. It is just like an I Spy book, but with famous paintings. There is a group of forgers that broke into the museum and stole all but 4 of the art pieces and replaced them with forgeries.
Your job is to compare the original painting with the ones in the museum to find which paintings have been stolen. There are 16 forgers each belonging to 1 of the 4 gangs. By locating the hidden symbol and counting the changes, it is possible to identify the forger who made each fake. I made up a chart that you can print out to use with this book. Happy Hunting!

Geography FUN!

I love to use VELLUM paper for geography. My son has a lot of fun tracing maps on the paper. A few weeks ago we took a field trip to the Sausalito Bay Model. http://www.spn.usace.army.mil/bmvc/ For those of you who live in the Bay Area of California this is a must see! For a follow up activity I had him trace a map of California and label the rivers, Delta, Bay, Estuary, and where he would find Brackish water (all things we learned while at the Bay Model).

If you use the Charlotte Mason method you probably do Map Drills. If your not familiar with Map Drills they are a very simple, yet effective way to teach geography. Once a week we I introduce a new country from Europe (the continent from which we are studying in History). I give Ryan a blank, outlined map, of Europe and have him find and label the country.
http://www.beyondbooks.com/bbshared/maps/europe/pdf/europe.pdf
Each week we add a new country and review the ones we have already learned. Now that we have over 15 countries, I choose only 7 or 8 each week for him to write on the map, but have him verbally locate each country that has been introduced.

What does all that have to do with VELLUM?? Well, I like to switch things up, so I will put the vellum paper over the map (the large, colorful map we use) and have him trace and label the countries we have learned.