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By Mom Unplugged, October 31, 2007 12:31 pm

My daughter’s Montessori class (1st through 3rd grade) does a wonderful thing for Halloween that I thought might interest some homeschool families or teachers out there.

Instead of wearing Halloween costumes to school, or even simply using the day to celebrate fall, the children prepare an oral report about a famous historical person. They must read a book about (or by) that person, then gather facts about their chosen person, most importantly they are not allowed to tell anyone else (except the teacher of course) who they are.

Throughout the week before Halloween, the teacher briefly presents to the class each of the chosen historical figures so everyone is familiar with them.

On Halloween the children go to school dressed as their person. They each give a short presentation to the class about their person, ending their talk with the question: “Who am I?” At the end of each presentation, the class tries to guess who the student is.

I am so impressed with this idea. What a wonderful way to encourage excitement about reading, history and learning…all while dealing with the sometimes sticky issue of how to celebrate (or not celebrate) Halloween at school.

My daughter read Little House in the Big Woods and chose Laura Ingalls Wilder. We had a great bonnet in the dress-up box, but no dress. As a teenager, I used to make clothes, and I actually do own a sewing machine that I have used exactly once since I bought it about 8 years ago, so I decided to go for a Super Mom Award and make a dress!

We went to Walmart (our only local fabric source) to choose a pattern and an appropriate fabric. The pattern was simple. I chose a classic little girl dress and bought an extra yard of fabric to make it reach the ankle instead of the pattern-specified knee length. The fabric choice was a little tougher.

I was thinking “little girl in dainty flowered calico,” my 7 year-old was apparently thinking “trashy bar-maid in seedy saloon.” She kept holding up more and more impossible fabrics beginning with: “Oh look Mom!” (florescent rainbow motif) and ending with: “Would she have worn this one?” (hot pink sequins on purple sparkle background). We finally settled on something resembling more of a calico.

After many hours of work wrestling zippers and gathered sleeves, I was quite pleased with the final result. There are a few flaws that probably only I will ever see, and it might not be 100% historically accurate, but I am pretty proud of it I must say.

The presentations were amazing and the costumes were very cute, and quite clever. For example there was Neil Armstrong (tin foil boots), Abraham Lincoln (fake beard and hat of course) and Mother Teresa (very clever rendition of Mother Teresa’s classic “chura” headscarf made out of a white towel with blue ribbon sewn on!) … as well as a very realistic-looking 6 year-old Sandra Day O’Connor complete with gavel!

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By Mom Unplugged, October 29, 2007 5:45 pm

I recently found these sturdy cardboard puzzles at Cosco and they are really great!

Each puzzle represents a continent. At the moment the manufacturer, A Broader View, only makes four (North America, South America, Africa, and Europe) but I believe that more may be in the works. Cosco had them bundled in packs of two, so we ended up buying all four and I am so glad we did!

One of my pet peeves with some geographic puzzles is that often the pieces are cut out in such a way as to bear no relationship to the actual shape of a state or a country. Why? Wouldn’t it be much more useful and educational to follow the natural boundaries?

These puzzle pieces do follow the natural shape of each country or state (except in the case of very small countries and states). This makes total sense to me!

Capitals are labeled, as are other major cities, large bodies of water and even lat / long.

It would be nicer if these were made of wood rather than cardboard, but at least the cardboard is quite sturdy, and feels like it will last a long time. One word of advice though: the first time it is unwrapped, an adult should remove the pieces since they are stuck in there pretty hard.

If you can’t get to Cosco (or they don’t have them any more), then you can get North and South America from Amazon (links below). It seems that as of right now, Europe and Africa are out of stock. Hopefully they will return eventually.

You also can find all of them, plus some interesting-sounding global puzzles (a future post!) at the manufacturer’s store: Geography Zone. Otherwise, search online to check for other stores and pricing. It seems to vary between $7.00 and $10.00.

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By Mom Unplugged, October 23, 2007 12:21 pm

Thank you to everyone who joined the first “Unplugged Project,” it was a huge success! We had six bloggers who put their links in Mr. Linky and wrote about their project. I kind of thought I might be doing this alone, so I was really thrilled to have you six join me!

Reading the posts was very interesting for me. I noticed that nearly everyone talked about how other lessons came out of the project. For example Becky of Boys Rule My Life wrote this:

“We even had a little learning time when Will asked what was inside the leaves. We talked about how leaves and people both have ‘veins’. I think next time we do this, we’ll have another ‘learning time’ about mixing colors. I’ll only get out the red, yellow, and blue; we’ll come up with the rest.”

Tamara of Mama Tamara said:

“The pictures don’t really capture the whole ‘picture’ though. The kids enjoyed collecting items on their walk outside, and learned several new and interesting things about the items they collected. And they really liked experimenting with painting/stamping with the different items.”

It really does seem that the “best” learning often comes at unexpected moments, doesn’t it? I guess that is one of the reasons why it feels so good to get together with your kids from time to time and just do something fun.

This thought leads me to revelation number two: Many of you thanked me for coming up with this idea because you needed a “little nudge” to sit down and do a project. Well so do I! That is one of my more selfish reasons for deciding to give this a try in the first place!

I find it very easy to get stuck in my rut of laundry, chores, cooking, etc. Plus, with a very busy 21 month-old at home, all too often I find myself saying “I’m too busy with the baby” or “I’m too tired” when my older two children ask me to do something with them. This weekly “Unplugged Project” forces me to sit down at least once a week and really try and do something fun with them all.

This morning my oldest daughter asked me what the next project was going to be. My son overheard and said: “You mean we get to do a project together every week? Yahoo!!!” I felt happiness at his excitement, but also a pang of Mom Guilt at the number of times I am “too busy.” This will be a good thing for us too.

I also want to thank all the people who didn’t participate, but who stopped by to check out our project yesterday. Judging by my “stats,” it was probably the biggest day ever for Unplug Your Kids in terms of numbers of visits. It is so nice to know that I am writing for an interested audience and not just a vacant void!

If you haven’t yet done so, feel free to take a quick look at everyone’s work and leave a comment. You can find links to the other Unplugged Project bloggers in Mr. Linky on Sunday night’s post. Mr. Linky is the little list at the bottom of the post, just click on the names and you will be miraculously transported to to their blog.

Thanks again! I enjoyed myself and hope you did too!

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Again, here is next week’s project:

Decorate a Small Pumpkin

Supplies:
- a small pumpkin (or big if you want!)
- paint and brushes

Have your child decorate a small pumpkin with paint. Leave it up to them. Younger children will want to just dab on paint. Older children might have a plan for a face, animal, design…whatever! If you don’t have a pumpkin, how about drawing one on a piece of paper and letting your child decorate that?

Hope to see you next Monday!

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By Mom Unplugged, September 22, 2007 11:14 am

Here’s an Unplugged Project for kids: Origami! I used to love doing origami as a child and I even still have my origami “how-to” books and paper. Yes, I really am a packrat.

I gathered the kids, my old books and my ancient origami paper, and we made some origami. Here are the results. You should be able to find two butterflies, two swans, two fancy boxes, and one ruby-throated hummingbird. The hummingbird was actually one of my childhood creations. We found it squashed between the pages of one of the books!

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By Mom Unplugged, September 21, 2007 6:46 pm

I have written several posts about how to certify your yard as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF):

Project: Make Your Yard a Certified Wildlife Habitat (July 5, 2007)

Backyard Wildlife Habitat: Great Nature Slideshow (July 14, 2007)

Another Backyard Wildlife Slideshow (July 20, 2007)

The other day I just got an NWF email saying that they have almost reached their goal of certifying 100,000 habitats. The NWF needs to certify only 5,000 more yards to get there!

If you have been thinking about doing it (or even if the whole concept is new to you), now is the time. You don’t have to have a grand estate. All you need are the four basic habitat elements: food, water, cover, and places to raise young.

Once you go through the easy online process to certify, you will be eligible to buy the cool sign like ours in the photo. That way, neighbors and passers-by will know that you care enough about wildlife to provide a sustainable habitat in your own yard. You’ll also help spread the word to others about the existence of this great program.

Having your kids help you certify your yard is a wonderful way to teach them about the needs of wildlife. Two Unplug Your Kids readers even created online nature slideshows of their habitats. You can view them by clicking these links: Meeyauw’s slide show and Tiffany’s slide show (Nature Mom). If you feel like making your own slideshow, please let me know and I would love to link to it.

So, click here to get started today!