FreshlyPlanted

Measuring Is for the Birds!

By freshlyplanted - 3:55 PM

Lately, everything is a measure of comparison around here. I think this is how most preschool and early elementary minds think best? Our days are peppered with: Who is taller, Isia or Billy? Is the bookcase taller than Daddy? Is the counter-top too tall for Esther to reach? (Not anymore!) This real-life "school"- thinking on their feet- is how my active kids think best. So when we were reading Chapter 5 of Burgess Bird Book for Children together, Isia wanted to know just how much bigger Welcome Robin was than Jenny Wren? We measured lines on a piece of paper- one Robin-sized, one Wren-sized- which helped a bit. Then I drew these real-life size examples, which helped a lot. Her first question was, "Is a Robin really that big?" She was surprised by the Sparrow's size, too. Then I realized that birds are usually viewed from far away- which doesn't allow kids to realize their actual size.

She was thrilled to hold them, and then wanted to start measuring things "in birds." (To help keep our measuring consistent, I put a black dot on the side of each bird to help us.) We measured a chair, a book, and a few other things using the Robin. Then I suggested we measure them again using the Wren and Swallow to see if there was a difference. I created this chart for us to record our measurements, which I'm including as a free printable at the very end of the post. I'm also including a blank chart, a Robin printable, a Wren printable, and a Swallow printable.

Isia is now asking for drawings of more birds, including a Blue Jay (which is Daddy's favorite). In the words of Anne Lamott, I promised we'll take it "bird by bird."

Easy extension activities:

Laminate the birds (here's our very economical laminator), then color with dry-erase crayons.
Have older children reference a Bird Guide for proper colors & markings.
Practice math equations by discussing "How many more Wrens than Robins for a chair?" and comparing together. Keep repeating for different objects.
Write out math equations on paper, comparing different bird quantities for each object.
Fill in the blank graph sheet (included below) with your own items to measure.
Read some bird books together, here are some of our favorites:

*This post contains affiliate links for products we use & enjoy. If you purchase through these links we receive a small percentage of the sale, at no cost to you. Thanks for your support!

I'm teaming up with Erin from The Usual Mayhem for fun activities to accompany "The Burgess Bird Book for Children." Here are other fun bird posts you won't want to miss:

http://www.theusualmayhem.com/2016/02/5-minute-birds-nest-breakfast-with-recipe/

http://www.freshlyplanted.com/2016/02/bird-seed-favors.html

http://www.theusualmayhem.com/2016/02/bird-beak-adaptations/

http://www.freshlyplanted.com/2016/02/Kid-Cook-Quick-Seed-Yeast-Bread.html

We'll be posting for the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

::Click on this picture for Free Printables::

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Easy Homemade Laundry Detergent

By freshlyplanted - 2:25 PM

I'm hesitant to say that winter's behind us, but spring is in the air around our woods. Which has meant warming temperatures, a thawing lake, sprouting bulbs, and mud. And more mud. And a bit more mud for good measure (wink). Since we spend a lot of time outdoors, especially the kids, there's no avoiding the tracking-in and mud-covered clothing that always accompanies this season. As my grand-mother would say, "It is what it is." So I keep a damp "chore" towel on the kitchen floor to mop up mud puddles, my patience handy for little excited feet that forgot to leave their muddy boots on the rug, and this detergent in our cupboard to combat all possible stains. I honestly didn't realize what a potent stain-fighter this is until I ran out of it! I ended up buying a name-brand detergent to use until we made our next batch, and was amazed at the difference. All of a sudden, there were marks & smudges on everything. I ended up making another batch within a week, and tucking that name-brand detergent up in our cupboard for a dire laundry emergency.

*This post contains affiliate links for products we use & enjoy. If you purchase through these links we receive a small percentage of the sale, at no cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Soap grating is an excellent hand strengthener for kids, which is another benefit of homemade detergent. It's helpful to prepare little hand muscles for pencil work and longer writing sessions. It's a great energy burner, too! I always stick close by to make sure little heads don't bend too closely to the grater (and to take over when hands get tired). The grating disc on a food processor works beautifully as well. We use Ivory for our recipe, but let me know if you experiment with any other soaps.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Easily doubles. Inspired by EcoFriendly Family Recipe

1 cup Washing soda
1 cup Borax
1/2 cup Oxiclean
1 bar Ivory soap
10-15 drops Tea Tree, Purification or Thieves Essential Oil (EO)

Finely grate your soap, then spread out on a baking sheet to dry overnight. (I store ours in an unheated oven to keep it out of sight.) The next day, process the dry flakes in a food processor to create a fine powder. Let it sit for a few minutes afterwards to let the powder settle a bit.
In a large bowl, combine your soap powder, washing soda, borax and oxiclean, then whisk to combine. Sprinkle 10-15 drops of EO on top of the mixture, then whisk to combine again.
Carefully spoon into a container of your choice, making a note to use 2 TB per load*. You can keep indefinitely in a sealed container at room temperature.

*Helpful to know: We fill our liquid laundry detergent dispenser with vinegar for every load. We also wash all our clothes in cold water, but have used this in hot water with our towels & it works great!

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"Bird Seed" Bread for Kids

By freshlyplanted - 12:23 PM

This might be our easiest yeast bread yet! And this was a perfect week for easy. I woke up to plumbing malfunction on Wednesday, with a basement flooded with septic water. So I quickly got dressed, got the kids woke up and dressed, and- since we had to shut off the water- headed to someplace with working bathrooms, breakfast, and lots of hot coffee. The rest of Wednesday was a blur, and by Thursday I was ready to take a deep breath and make some bread. It's hard to not breath deeper when you're baking, and kneading is always therapeutic for me, too. To keep it peaceful, I'll share some tips below for baking with kids. Baking is great math practice and a wonderful introduction to where food comes from. Food magically appears on store counters for most of our world, so connecting children to the process of making food is very important.

This is also edible science in action! Did you know that yeast is actually alive? Here is a great online article about teaching kids about yeast and how it works in bread. One of the best things about this bread is you don't have to wait all day for the yeast to rise- only two hours in the refrigerator.

Since we're continuing to study The Burgess Bird Book for Children, we used only "bird seeds" in this dough. It was fun to hear Isia & Billy explain why birds like seeds- "They're easy for them to pick up."- and discuss why seeds are healthy for us, too. This led to a conversation about other foods we eat that animals like to eat, too: lettuce, carrots, meat, fish, etc.

*This post contains affiliate links for products we use & enjoy. If you purchase through these links we receive a small percentage of the sale, at no cost to you. Thanks for your support!

A Waldorf teacher once advised me to make bread ahead of time for the littlest children, especially if you're cooking for a class. That way they can enjoy the process, then enjoy the product right away. So smart! For young children at home, you could also mix the dough the night before, let it rise in the refrigerator overnight, then knead in the seeds together in the morning. We like start this process together after breakfast and bake the bread in time for lunch, or an early afternoon snack.

“Bird Seed” Bread

click here for printable version

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups warm water

2 tsp fast acting yeast

2 ½ cups white flour

¾ cup wheat flour

1 ½ tsp salt

¼ cup pumpkin seeds

¼ cup sesame seeds

1/8 cup chia seeds

Instructions:

In a small bowl, combine warm water (110-115 degrees) and yeast. In a separate, large bowl add flours and salt. Whisk the dry ingredients together, then add the water-yeast mixture all at once. Stir with a large spoon until a well-combined, sticky dough forms.
Cover the bowl, and let the dough rise in the refrigerator for at least two hours. While you wait, lightly spray a baking sheet or line with parchment paper.
Once the dough has risen, sprinkle your work area with flour and scrape the dough onto it. Knead it a few times, and then sprinkle on seeds. Keep kneading, rolling the dough over any loose seeds, until everything’s combined.
Place the dough on the sprayed or parchment-lined baking sheet, sprinkling a light coat of flour on top to keep it moist, and let rest for 45 minutes. While it’s resting, preheat oven to 450 degrees and place a metal pan on the lowest oven rack. Prepare 1 cup of hot water for the next step.
When ready to bake, make a few ½ inch slashes on top of the bread. Place the bread, still on the pan, in the oven and carefully pour hot water into the metal pan on the lowest rack. Close the door quickly!
Bake the bread for around 25 minutes, until it’s a nice golden brown. It should sound “hollow” if an adult knocks it carefully.
Remove bread from the oven and cool on a rack. Any leftovers should be stored in an airtight container, or plastic bag, at room temperature. Enjoy!

I' I'm teaming up with Erin from The Usual Mayhem for fun activities to accompany "The Burgess Bird Book for Children." Here are other fun bird posts you won't want to miss:

http://www.theusualmayhem.com/2016/02/5-minute-birds-nest-breakfast-with-recipe/

http://www.freshlyplanted.com/2016/02/bird-seed-favors.html

http://www.theusualmayhem.com/2016/02/bird-beak-adaptations/

We'll be posting for the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

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Art Study: Pieter Bruegel, part 2

By freshlyplanted - 3:37 PM

::This is a continuation of yesterday's post on Pieter Bruegel, so make sure you start there if you haven't already. There's another project, and helpful background information on Bruegel as well::

Our next art time together, we did a different style of winter painting. To prepare for class, I experimented with painting two types of "snow paint" onto aluminum foil. The left is a recipe of white acrylic and glue, the right is white acrylic and dish soap. While they both held onto the foil when dry, then right held up a tad bit better, especially when the foil was folded in the middle. It was also easier to paint with!

*This post contains affiliate links for products we use & enjoy. If you purchase through these links we receive a small percentage of the sale, at no cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Pieter Bruegel the Elder | Freshly Planted

To prepare for our snow scenes, we reviewed Bruegel's paintings then the kids drew winter pictures of their own. We encouraged them to fill the page, which they did wonderfully. After their pictures were finished, we washi-taped them onto a prepared piece of foil. I love using cardboard for art projects. We used cereal cardboard for our first Bruegel art project, then used a piece of box cardboard with foil wrapped over it & stapled for this one.

The kids traced their pictures, still washi-taped so they wouldn't move, with a sharp pencil onto their foil canvas. If they pressed hard, the foil held the tracings very nicely. To make sure all areas are traced well, kids might need a little adult help. Using a colored pencil to trace over a pencil drawing also helps make sure everything gets traced.

Everyone then removed their drawings and went over their tracings with Sharpies, coloring in areas of their drawings and adding additional details. While the kids are very generous about sharing Sharpies, I need to buy more for our art classes. We're using them a lot lately! Don't they look so pretty & jewel-like on the foil?

Then we added our snow paint on top of our drawings. To make our snow paint, each kid got a plastic bowl with a medium squirt of white acrylic paint and a small squirt of blue Dawn dishsoap (although any dishsoap will likely work). The dishsoap also helps thin the paint, so a little goes a long way!

If anyone has a picture with sky, encourage them to leave it unpainted. I adore this foil sky with the snowy hills under it!

These are all of our Bruegel art projects. We have done more snow painting since class though, my kids love painting on foil now. And Isia ended up re-doing her Bruegel painting, which I'll share in a future Treehouse School Review once it's finished. While her first painting was fine, she- without any prompting from me- decided she could do a nicer job since "I know how to now." Intrinsic motivation is a beautiful thing!

Other Artists we've studied:

Henri Matisse

*Please note that cardboard isn't archival, so these won't last for hundreds of years. But a picture is! So I'd recommend taking pictures to keep these artworks around that long or using a different sturdy material as your surface- bristol board would work nicely.

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Pieter Bruegel: Kid Art Study

By freshlyplanted - 11:44 AM

For the past month, we've been studying Pieter Bruegel the Elder. While I enjoy his religious works, such as "The Tower of Babel" (1563), I love his genre works the best. Bruegel loved to paint everyday, peasant life and would even dress up as a peasant to take part in their festivities- much to his wealthy friends' amusement! At the time, "genre" paintings- or paintings representing everyday life with everyday people- weren't popular, but this changed after Bruegel's influence.

Since we've been enjoying snow, I wanted to share his lovely winter scenes with our class. These pictures are so much fun to share with kids- because there's so much going on! It's almost like a "Where's Waldo?" scene, with small details telling several stories within a scene. The best way to view these with kids is just to ask them what they see. I find just giving them time & space, while listening intently, will allow them to bring the picture to life in their own words. We studied these Bruegel pictures together:

"The Census at Bethlehem", 1566

"The Hunters in the Snow," 1565

*Another excellent resource for sharing art with kids is "Five Easy Steps for Talking with Children about Art" by Rachelle Doorley (Tinkerlab).

Within his winter paintings, Bruegel does a wonderful job of contrasting cool colors (blue, green, purple) with warm colors (red, yellow, orange). You can always find a candle burning, or some source of warmth within the mostly cool pictures. To explore warm versus cool colors, we practiced some color mixing after reading "Mouse Paint" together.

*This post contains affiliate links for products we use & enjoy. If you purchase through these links we receive a small percentage of the sale, at no cost to you. Thanks for your support!

I found this free printable at Mrs. Miner's Monkey Business. For our "brushes," we picked up cotton balls with clothespins- great for building hand muscles! We made one "brush" per color, three per student, then I put a little paint on top of each jar to let them mix in the puddles. It was so fun to see their joy as their colors mixed together (smile).

We then drew winter scenes- using pencil first, then coloring it in with colored pencils and tempera paint. After the coloring was done, we added some "snow" as a final touch. We've been using this simple "snow paint" recipe for years, and the kids still love it every time. The best part is that it dries fluffy!

This bottom picture is the artist sledding in a round plastic disk down the hill. Isn't it lovely in the middle of all that "snow"? I love seeing where their imaginations take them!

We had one more day of snow painting- with another recipe that I'll share tomorrow!- and also filled in our notebooking page (free pdf). I always have the students brainstorm the sentences together, which I write on our blackboard for them to copy down.

It's fun to hear what they come up with! And I love seeing their little pictures, depicting either a work by the artist or- as with this one- a picture similar to what the artist would paint.

Other Artists we've studied:

Henri Matisse

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Homemade Laundry Detergent

“Bird Seed” Bread

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