Water Cycle Felt Puzzle Plus Book Suggestions (Earth Day)

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Today I wanted to share with you a water cycle felt puzzle I created in honor of Earth Day which is coming up. This felt puzzle was really easy to create and can be a fun hands on lesson. To go along with this puzzle, I have for you book suggestions and free printables from some wonderful bloggers.

Felt Puzzle:

Book Suggestions:

1. A Drop Around the World 
2.  All the Water in the World
3. Magic School Bus Wet All Over
4. Did a Dinosaur Drink this Water?
5. A Drop in the Ocean 
6. The Drop goes Plop 

Free Printables:

1. Water Cycle Lapbook from Homeschool helper Online. 
2. Montessori water cycle activities plus free printables from prek and sharing
3. Water cycle poster, song, and a cut and paste water cycle diagram from Buzzing with Ms. B (scroll all the way to the end of the post to grab her freebie.)
4. Head over to The first grade parade for some fun activities plus a free water cycle diagram. 
5. Water Cycle puzzle from Relentlessly fun, deceptively educational.  
6. Water Cycle Themed Unit and Free Resources from Homeschool Giveaways.

A big thanks to all the wonderful bloggers I mentioned for the free activities and worksheets. Your hard work will be helpful to teachers and parents :).

That's it! I hope all these resources are helpful to you and if you have any book suggestions or printable to share please drop me a comment.

Linked up with:
naturalbeachliving
deceptivelyeducational
homeschoolcreations
teachingmama
lambertslately

Artist Study: Van Gogh (Sunflower)

We started our artist study with Vincent Van Gogh. For each artist we will draw, paint, study two of their most famous pieces.

Some of the things we learned about Van Gogh:

• Van Gogh was a Dutch painter
• Only one of his paintings sold during his lifetime
• He was really close to his brother Theo
• His paintings use vibrant colors and sometimes seem joyful
• He painted several sunflowers in anticipation of his guest Gaugin
• No one ever painted the way Van Gogh did
• Since his death, his paintings have become some of the most famous in the world

I found a wonderful picture book to read to the boys that goes along with this sunflower painting.

 After I read the book we worked on a notebooking page. I had the boys fill in his birth, death, nationality, and one fact they learned.

I set out the material and had the boys lightly sketch out a flower pot and sunflowers.

After the paint dried the boys went over it with a black marker just to give it more detail.

The boys added white and black using the tip of their paint brush to the center of the flower. 

We added the notebooking page, and painting to our artist portfolio

For this lesson I used a tutorial from deep space sparkle and added some of my own things. Her site is great make sure you go and visit.

You can go to my Pinterest board for more art study ideas and free resources.

Follow Ayan's board art study on Pinterest.

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homeschoolcreations

DIY Art Portfolio (Artist Study Unit)

The boys and I will be starting an artist study unit soon. I wanted some where to keep all our art projects, and notebooking pages. So I decided to put together an art portfolio.

If you would like to recreate this all you need is;

• Poster board ( I used one for each of my boys, folded in half)
• Paint (or any other material to decorate the front of your board)
• Duct tape
• Brass fasteners 

This was really easy to put together and it turned out really nice. You can close the side ends of the board so that its like a case, but I chose to keep it open. We will use brass fasteners to hold all our material in.

 We painted the front of our poster board with water color paint. 

I put duct tape on all four corners and the inside.

The boys each picked their own colors for the duct tape.

 I can't wait to start our unit study and put these to good use. 

I've been pinning ideas on my Pinterest board. Head on over there for more ideas and free resources. 

Follow Ayan's board art study on Pinterest.

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milkandcuddles

Art Around the World: India (Taj Mahal Bleeding Tissue Paper Art)

Namaste,

Today I am sharing another Art Around the World post. The boys and I are off to India and learning some fascinating facts. We chose the Taj Mahal as our art subject, after reading about how/why it was built we got started on our art project.

I follow the tutorial on Crafty Classroom, they have many wonderful other art projects you should check them out.

It was a perfect project because I already had all the material I needed. Don't you just love it when that happens!

I traced an outline of The Taj Mahal on to the paper and had the boys color it in with white oil pastel, making sure to leave some parts uncolored.

With a little bit of water they started to cover their paper with the bleeding tissue paper. I purchased mine from Amazon, I am not sure if they have it at Michaels.

The idea is that where ever you colored with the oil pastel the tissue paper wont bleed through. We let our paper dry and once it dried we removed all the tissue paper off.

I gave the boys a sharpie to go over their picture and draw in some of the detail. I left that part optional and my younger son chose not to fill in the details. It still turned out really beautiful.

My 7 year old chose to put in details. 

We backed it onto black construction paper to make all the colors pop. With or without the details the project turned out really beautiful.

The boys insisted I hang it up above my desk. Now I have some beautiful art work to look at :).

For more art around the world ideas and geography resources check out my Geography Pinterest board.

Follow Ayan's board Geography on Pinterest.

linked up with:
naturalbeachliving
lambertslately
homeschoolcreations
practical-mom

Balloon Powered Mars Rover

After studying about Mars the boys and I put together our own version of The Mars Rover. Its powered by a balloon.

Material:

We gathered our supplies and got started on making our Rover. I poked holes in the 4 bottle caps, and the boys helped me assemble the rest.

This Rover would not be practical on Mars and we discussed the whys. We also experimented how we could make it go faster and a long distance by adjusting how much air, surface, and the position.

The boys enjoyed making and testing out their rover. I managed to get a short (by short I mean really short) video before the toddler took over :).

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