Activities for Siblings during Homeschool

This is one of the most common questions for new homeschooling parents (like me): What do I do with the younger kids while I teach the older ones? I've been collecting some great resources that are making our school time richer and more fun (with special thanks to my big sister Christa). I give the sibling activities in the same subject as the other student (its not always the older one!). The activities are so much fun, that the other child often joins in when their lesson is finished!

I have tried really hard to find free activities or printables that stand alone, or complement some of the manipulatives and materials I already own - so if you don't own some of these, you may have to invest in a few good materials. Also, the activities need to be fun for many many sessions, not just once or twice, and something the child can do without a lot of supervision. Print and laminate (if you can) printables ahead of time so you can pull activities out as need. Below is my list of ideas and activities for siblings during homeschool.

Math
We already own lots of manipulatives from Right Start Math and goodwill, so finding good printables and ideas is a great way to use that investment, and prepare them for formal lessons later.
Pattern Blocks and free printable activities from learning resource
Cuisenaire rod and free printable games
Geo-boards and printable shape patterns

Reading/Grammar
Keeping fun, special use books and games on hand makes learning to read feel really special - and Bob books are definitely a favorite around here!
Bob Books and free printable activities from by Bob Books and more from Royal Baloo
Independent Reading for older kids with my reading chart
Sight Words flash cards games (make up sentences with cards, or read through and make piles of "words I know" and "words I don't know")
Explode the Code books

Literature
After we read something together, older children sometimes have to do a writing activity following the reading. Younger children can muse on the story by recreating scenes with special materials reserved for this time. The special materials and story prompt  keep children focused.
Modeling Clay like plastillina - encourage them to mold shapes on their own with out extra colors
Drawing with special materials like Beeswax crayons

Coloring and Puzzle Printables
There are tons of free printables online, but finding really great quality coloring pages and worksheets from thoughtful designers is always a bonus. I print lots of these and keep them in a folder, only giving one at a time so each page is valued.
Made by Joel printable Coloring Sheets and Worksheets
Mr. Printables Puzzles and Coloring
Fancy coloring pages from D. Palmer

Do you have more resources to add?

Art Week! Friday: The Exhibit

FRIDAY MORNING I had originally left open, thinking we might need that time to finish our comic book or other projects. But we didn't have anything unfinished so we decided to do a still life instead. I cut flowers from our butterfly bush and grabbed some apples and we got started!

I didn't do any preparation for this lesson, so I'm sure this could have gone better. But these are some of the points we hit:

• sketch out the main shapes of what you see first, you can add more details when you begin to paint
• each person is looking from a different place, and so we each see slightly different things
• the background color doesn't have to be the same as the wall behind it - choose a color that complements your composition
• apples aren't just red - what other colors do you see in the apples?

The really fun part of this project was that all three of us were looking at the same thing, and painted the same thing, yet each painting turned out very unique. They thought that was pretty cool. In a way we were putting into action the diversity of styles they had been seeing in the art books all week.

They were given free painting time for the rest of the morning and were extra motivated because they knew this was their last chance to make something for the art exhibit.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON I encouraged the girls to pick out their very best paintings for the gallery wall, and then we also had two large "collections" that we hung along the stairs. I wanted them to understand that it was okay that some paintings are better than others - some don't make the cut, but that doesn't mean they aren't valuable. Also, I wanted to talk about how some art work is made together as a group, when an artist explores a certain topic, subject or style. This ended up being way too easy since my four year old had drawn about a hundred variations of houses with a tree and person, and my six year old made her own series of dots (like in the story The Dot).

After they made their selections, I cleaned up our school room and got ready for the art exhibit. They looked forward to the exhibit all week, so I wanted to make it feel extra special and sort of surprise them with it. I always think the best way to make an event feel special is to transform the space. Our school room has lots of clutter (and not many empty walls), so I had to get creative with this. I finally decided to hang a sheet in front of the school shelf and use it as our gallery wall. This gave us a large empty wall space, and also hid the messy school clutter. Combine that with an actually clean room and a table cloth with hor d'oeurves and flowers, and our loft felt like a fancy gallery. I made tickets as an extra little surprise for our grand opening.

still life model to decor

L's work is on the right, and J's on the left

The two collections lined the stairs, leading up to the main exhibit in the loft.
Tickets were collected at the bottom of the stairs. 

I also encouraged the girls to dress up. L and I dressed in all black after an artist cliche she had seen in some books. J did not like that idea at all, so she wore her fluffy pink dress instead.

The main event happened after Daddy was home from work. He was the best audience ever, asking lots of questions, and listening to them tell him about their favorite paintings. L was very eager to talk about her work. She worked diligently all week, and was eager to learn how to do each new task. I was very proud of her, and I think the art exhibit made her feel quite important.

I'm not sure this cured our homeschool burn out, and we're way behind in history and math now. But we had the best week ever. We had a crazy week of stress-free messy learning, and I think my 6 year old found that even hard work can be fun. I think this is maybe the best of what school can be: exploring what our children are really drawn to, and teaching them to love learning. Hopefully, we can bring more of this kind of learning into each week!

Keep up with the rest of Art Week here:

Get Ready
Monday: Experimenting with Materials and Textures
Tuesday: Landscapes and Space
Wednesday: People and Portraits
Thursday: Storytelling and Comic Books
Friday: The Exhibit

Art Week! Thursday: Storytelling and Comic Books

THURSDAY MORNING was hard work, but was maybe my favorite part of Art Week (wait, have I said that every day?).  To participate in this activity you'll need to buy How to Make a Comic Book from Art Projects for Kids. This little guide could easily be used by older kids, and maybe is more directed for kids in the 8-12 age range. But my 6 year old did just fine with lots of guidance. She had to work really hard on this, and I was really proud of her efforts. She can give up on complicated projects easily, and so I was glad to see her learning that everything, including art, is better with hard work. My four year old had been begging to play with play doh, so she spent the day nearby working with play-doh while big sister and I made a comic.

We spent the morning planning out our story, dividing it into 8 panels and then drawing the panels. We did the lettering as we went along. This is the story L devised:

1. L tells mommy, "I want to be an artist!"
2. So Mommy and L and J paint and paint.
3. L thinks, "Whew! It's hard work to paint."
4. They painted and painted, and didn't give up until...
5. the painting was finished and it was beautiful.
6. When L was 17 years old, she went to art school
7. where she learned about painting.
8. And when she was all grown up, she was an artist.

We wanted to tell the story with mostly pictures, so with each frame we asked, "how can we show what's happening in this sentence?" We would discuss different options, and then draw. I corrected several drawing mistakes as well, explaining proportion and angles for the tables.

We also used the facial expression guide included in How to Make a Comic Book, which was really helpful and fun. We would discuss the feeling in each picture, and then look at the examples and decide which type of eyes and mouth and eyebrows would best illustrate that feeling.

It took us about two hours to complete our 8 panels - like I said, it was hard work for a 6 year old. I have some nice black ink pens, and so I inked the drawings for her while she took a break. Older kids could definitely do this themselves (and L could have as well), but we had already worked so long, I wanted to give her a break.

Another thing I did, after inking the drawing, was scan it into my computer. I know sometimes when the kids color things, the original drawing gets a bit lost. I was so proud of her work, I wanted to be able to save the original. I'm really glad I did. I also scaled the drawings down to fit the 8 panels onto one page (they were originally on 2 pages). The tiny-ness of the new drawing made them feel more like a comic, and we both got a kick out of that.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON we returned to color the comic. I gave L total freedom with this, although How to Make a Comic gives more guidance with color that would have been helpful. L colored one of the copies I made instead of her original with oil pastels which made nice bright colors.

I also spent a bit of time coloring her drawing digitally with Adobe Illustrator. I had lots of fun with this, although L thought that I didn't use enough colors. :)

We finished up the day by looking once again through our art books for famous paintings that had elements of storytelling. We noticed facial expressions, or details that were included to help suggest the story.

And then I selected some of my favorite children's books with great illustrations to talk about how stories are illustrated, and to notice the different styles of painting. We're big fans of Mo Willems (especially the way he uses the visual presentation of the text) and Patricia Polacco. Jan Brett also uses her illustrations to give extra details that aren't included in the text of the story. After selecting some great books, L enjoyed reading these again, this time paying more attention to how the text and the pictures go together and how some parts of the story are told through the pictures and not the text. 

Again, a very structured and detailed project was really satisfying and lots of fun. This was also a sneaky way to get her to do some writing without so much complaint. I think bookmaking may be a great way to encourage her to practice her writing in the future - so I see many more comic books in our future! And reading with comics seems to be a next step as well, so I'm on the hunt for good graphic novels/comic books for younger girls. This list looks really good, but I'll also take recommendations!

Keep up with the rest of Art Week here:

Get Ready
Monday: Experimenting with Materials and Textures
Tuesday: Landscapes and Space
Wednesday: People and Portraits
Thursday: Storytelling and Comic Books
Friday: The Exhibit

Art Week! Wednesday: People and Portraits

WEDNESDAY MORNING was actually a bit of a bust (much like getting this posted on Wednesday...), because we were busy and the girls were getting over the thrill of Art Week. So we had no morning activity. I had intended to talk about figure drawing, but didn't get to it. Check out some figure drawing stuff for kids at the Artful Parent.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON we got back in the game with self-portraits. I drew an example oval face with a line down the center to demonstrate proportions and other things, like making shadows around the nose, and the shape of the eyes and nose. Find a more in depth discussion of teaching portraits to children at That Artist Woman.

I helped them draw the faces carefully first and then I gave them more freedom during the painting. I was less precise with my four year old, because she was getting tired of painting already, and I wanted to keep it enjoyable.  My six year old word hard to get the proportions correct and did lots of erasing and re-drawing.

After we finished we spent some time going through our art books and looking at portraits by the masters. Once again, L liked the expressionists the best, but she also enjoyed seeing that there are many ways to do things. We used some of coloring pages of portraits from the Masterpiece Coloring Book again. These are nice to do with pastels on paper while looking at a copy of the original online.

I would have liked to have done more with people and portraits, but we were a bit burnt out on this day. But like the landscapes, I think this served as a good foundation and we can try portraits again later, next time adding shoulders, and backgrounds and perhaps drawing portraits of each other. We all enjoyed L's family portrait a few years ago, and now it might be time to try that again with the new information we've learned.

Keep up with the rest of Art Week here:

Get Ready
Monday: Experimenting with Materials and Textures
Tuesday: Landscapes and Space
Wednesday: People and Portraits
Thursday: Storytelling and Comic Books
Friday: The Exhibit

Art Week! Tuesday: Landscapes

TUESDAY MORNING we talked about how we see the world around us, and how artist are able to show space. We emphasized two things: Things that are closer are bigger and use bolder colors. Things that are farther away are smaller and user softer colors. (Another way of saying bolder/softer colors is to talk about the contrast of strong darks and lights, and the lesser contrast of more neutral colors. This was a bit much for my kids, so we stuck with the words bolder and softer.)

I sketched a quick landscape with a large house colored with red and green and black door. In the distance there is a small house colored with the same colors, but lightly. This quick drawing made the idea super-easy for them to understand.

Then I drew a landscape with four hills and showed how things can get gradually smaller. I got this idea from Art Projects for Kids also. I helped the girls each draw four lines on their paper and then encouraged them to draw a house and tree on each line getting gradually smaller. They added more details as well, like cars and people, and tree swings, and they thought the challenge to make it smaller each time was hilarious. So much so that they both added a fifth line on which the house was just a tiny dot.

When it was time to color we used a lot of greens on scratch paper to find just the right way to use them to make our greens go from bold to soft gradually. Once we had that figured out, we laid them on the paper in order and colored the grass pretty systematically moving from close to far. I oversaw this somewhat strictly, which they didn't seem to mind because it felt like a science experiment. I was a little less strict about their coloring of the houses and peoples and trees, but encouraged them to make each one a little bit lighter than the last.

This project was surprisingly fun perhaps because of how structured it was. The girls were excited about making their smoke smaller and smaller, and the illusion of space made it seem to be rising very high in the sky.

I think I'm the naked woman in the picture on the left.

When we finished we spent some time looking through some of the art books I had on the floor for landscapes. We tried to find examples of things getting smaller and softer as they moved farther away, and we weren't disappointed. We were also able to notice a lot of the textures we talked about yesterday, and we talked briefly about how things closer have more texture than things far away. [A note about the Old Masters:  we noticed differences in certain styles, such as how the expressionists use lots of bold color everywhere and have thicker marks, but we didn't talk about what Expressionism is. The goal was just to enjoy looking at art, to notice differences, and to understand the techniques of perspective that they all employ. I feel that this will set the stage for a desire to learn more about Art History later, and build a general love of art and looking now.]

L especially liked the landscape by Gainsborough shown above because the sheep in the distance were very small. She spent her free time drawing her own landscape with sheep (and mountains and the ocean), and when she was finished she painted another version of it.

I had intended to also do some indoor perspective projects, but the landscapes took up the whole morning. If you'd like to do that, here are some good projects from Dawn's Brain and Kids Artists.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON was quite fun. We waited until the afternoon to do our outdoor painting because it was cold. Then it ended up raining, but we were still able to go out onto our covered porch and paint the landscape. Pay attention to the weather and go outside when its not too cold, not too sunny, not too rainy.

To go outside, I used painters tape to mount watercolor paper on boards. I happened to already have a lot of these 12" x 12" boards around because I'm a painter, but use what you have. If you have a large board you can tape several small pieces of paper to it. This gives you a hard surface to work on wherever you are, and helps the painting dry flat. Its helpful to have at least two paintings per person because you can set one aside to dry and work on the other one, switching periodically. Allowing drying time is essential for working with watercolors (and one of the hardest parts for children!).

Since we were on the porch we set up dining chairs and little tables to hold all of our supplies. We painted until it got dark. I'd love to tell you our view was amazing, but my husband is in the middle of some big landscaping projects, so mostly we were looking at a giant pile of dirt dumped in the yard a few days earlier. Still we have a long driveway behind it that gave us some nice opportunities for perspective. I think their excitement about being outside distracted them from thinking about perspective very much, and so they didn't end up doing a lot of that. The girls both really wanted to paint the house and so they were disappointed we were sitting on the porch so that the house was not in our landscape. I asked them to make their first painting of the landscape they could see, and then they could do whatever they wanted for the rest. Again, I wanted them to think about the lesson, but I also wanted them to enjoy it, so I didn't push them too hard on this.

I did a little painting, too. 

And here's some of the paintings:

L's  tree and an imagined house, and the trees along our driveway.

J's pile of dirt and our driveway. 

I painted John's chicken coop. 

I noticed both girls made the ground flat even though our driveway goes up a hill. And they each colored the sky as a block, instead of a background behind the trees. I didn't correct any of these, but it was interesting to see, and remember for next time. They had such a great time, I think this will be something we repeat, and each time, we can build a little on what we've learned about perspective, and address things like the sky and horizon. This felt like a good foundation for painting in nature with the kids, and I'm excited to build on it in the future.

Keep up with the rest of Art Week here:

Get Ready
Monday: Experimenting with Materials and Textures
Tuesday: Landscapes and Space
Wednesday: People and Portraits
Thursday: Storytelling and Comic Books
Friday: The Exhibit

Art Week! Monday: Experimenting with Materials and Textures

Welcome to Art Week!

MONDAY MORNING was the easiest lesson. It's been a little while since we painted, so we got started by pulling out all our painting supplies and reminding the kids how to use them:

• drop water into each paint pot to get the paints wet
• rinse and dry your brush between changing colors
• lay your brushes flat to dry (even if you're using cheap brushes, good care is vital)
• use big brushes to paint large areas, and smaller brushes for details
• let a wet area dry before coming back to paint around or over it
• keep a washcloth nearby to blot if your watercolors get too runny or start to bleed (many tears are saved with quick blotting!)
• lay paintings flat to dry

I made the materials available and let them paint whatever they wanted all morning. I gave them some of the cheaper paper this morning reserving the good paper for later. And that was a good idea, because they went through a lot of paper. I would occasionally show them how to do something (like fill in a large area, or carefully paint around an edge without touching the wet paint next to you, or blotting, or mixing skin and hair colors) - but mostly I left freedom reign. 

They had a lot of experimenting with brushes, mixing colors and just generally painting all kinds of stuff. By lunch time, the floor of our space was covered in wet paintings. This was a great start to the week, because they quickly became familiar with how the materials worked and they had a lot of fun doing it. Rooster Dog, shown below, was one of the many creative inventions that was developed during free painting time. 

MONDAY AFTERNOON I gave each child an egg carton and sent them out to find textures. I encouraged them to find 12 things inside or outside that each feel different. I gave them plenty of time to do this while I finished some of my chores. They collected some really interesting things, but finding 12 different textures was ambitious for this age group. When we sat down together, I asked them to each pick their 4 favorite textures.

I drew a grid on a piece of paper for each of us creating 8 boxes, and we put their favorite textures in 4 of the boxes. We discussed what they felt like like and tried to find a word to describe each texture. We came up with words like: smooth, sandy/gritty, rough, bumpy, mushy, grassy and grainy. And then we talked about how we could paint the empty square next to each texture to look like the texture - not to look like the object, but the texture. How do you paint smooth? rough? gritty? grainy? We made not of which brush to use (a wide flat brush for smooth, and a stiff round brush for gritty), how wet the paint should be (a dry brush made drag lines for grainy, and wet brush worked well for mushy). We made fine lines for grassy, and used many layers to make rough. This was a fun activity, with more experimenting, but this time in a focused and guided way.

When we finished I chose some coloring pages from this Masterpiece Coloring Book from Art Projects for Kids (also check out these). I chose pages that had good opportunities for texture. We looked up the originals online and talked about what textures we saw, and then I gave them the pictures to paint with texture. This was more challenging for them than I expected, because their tendency is to paint the whole picture with one brush, and just fill in each block of color. But they were able to stop and consider how they might paint water or feathers.

And so ends day one! By the end of the day, and every day after, we had wet paintings strewn across our school room. It was really a beautiful mess. Each morning, we'd stack up the dry paintings into a pile for each child, and start again.

Keep up with the rest of Art Week here:

Get Ready
Monday: Experimenting with Materials and Textures
Tuesday: Landscapes and Space
Wednesday: People and Portraits
Thursday: Storytelling and Comic Books
Friday: The Exhibit

Printable Merit Badges: you earned it.

Merit badges really appeal to my need for external validation. I can just picture Ed Chigliak wrestling a little green man in a trailer park, right now, on my behalf.

What, didn't you watch Northern exposure?

While I was working on my book Flip Dolls & Other Toys That Zip, Stack, Hide, Grab & Go, I spent one particular evening sewing at least 8 zippers without swearing or injuring myself or even breaking a needle. Not too long ago, I'd buy extra needles, expecting to break at least 2, when working with zippers. I'll admit - I was feeling pretty proud. I've come a long way since I started sewing, and gained quite a few skills.

I'd say, I finally earned my zipper badge.

Later, when I was doing the illustrations for the book I remembered that feeling of accomplishment, and I drew merit badges to go with the skills taught in the Getting Started chapter. I've been wanting to make some in some sort of practical and share-able format ever since. Today's the day!

So, if you're collecting new skills (or refreshing old ones), and you need a little motivation - here's a treat for you! 12 printable merit badges for some essential sewing and softie making skills. Most of these skills are included in my book, but these will apply to lots of sewing skills. The pdf below includes the merit badges, along with some suggested accomplishments for earning your badge, and a "Sewing Skills" sash. Once you've earned your badge, print it, cut it out, and paste it on the sash to display for a little External Validation.

I think these definitely need to be uploaded to spoonflower and turned into Sewable Merit Badges. But I'm not there yet. What fun these will be to encourage the little ones as they start learning to sew! Download the files below, and be sure to let me know how you're using them!

Heart Felt

 I started this small felt board several years ago as a disciplinary tool. I was struggling with how to communicate good and bad behavior to my toddlers, you know the terrible twos and threes. I thought why re-invent the wheel, eh? So we developed a sort of gold star chart - only its a flannel board with hearts. Good behaviors were rewarded with hearts, and bad behaviors got a black square on the board. [See how I made my felt boards here.]

It was amazing how effective this was at that time. The girls were not catching on to the idea of consequences when I gave them warnings - and lecturing wasn't working, of course. But seeing a heart or a black spot on the chart sort of became a consequence they could understand. 

When the girls did something kind, or obeyed without arguing or said please and thank you - I let them pick out a heart to put on the board. (Each girl had a side of the board, identified this day by their little dress.)

When their behavior was not so good I put a black mark up. Really, the square is totally arbitrary. But it made the bad behavior visible - and they didn't like that. [side note: Black is one of J's favorite colors, so we recently added black hearts as well - which was a little confusing for John, but the rest of us were cool with it.]

When they apologized, or corrected the behavior, they got another heart and they could cover the black mark. They loved that. And so did I. Honestly, I was surprised how easily and quickly this worked. And its been fun to talk about colors and see how the girls arrange their hearts.

Now that the girls are a little older, consequences come a little more easily for all of us. Bad attitudes mean quiet time, fighting over a toy means losing the toy, etc. So I don't really use the black marks anymore. Instead, we made a little felt tree trunk and we started putting all of our hearts together, in one big family love tree - to continue reinforcing good behavior.

They love giving hearts to each other when they are kind to one another. And its good for me, too, to remember to look for those things instead of always pointing out their bad behavior. Sometimes they even give me hearts when I'm kind.  works for me, too.

The little felt board used to sit on the windowsill, but recently I took it apart and put it inside a large picture frame with the glass removed. I just used the cardboard already in the frame - which made this the easiest felt board I've ever made. (I did include a layer of batting between the felt and cardboard, but I didn't glue it or anything - the frame holds it together.) 

Our entryway table has become a little collection of school things, which I'm kind of digging. We refer to the globe and abacus quite a bit now that they are accessible - and kind of pretty, too. We have made other felt board projects for school or fun over the years, so I like having this accessible in the living room too, for a quick school-ish felt-play time. More felt to come, I'm sure.