Baby Cocoon Crochet

This a great book. Some of the patterns are pretty advanced, but I was able to get through most of them. Here's a few pics of what I made:

Cloud Chart for Weather Unit

Here is a fun way for our "littles" to remember the basic cloud types. We made this out of polyfil but it would probably turn out better with good old fashioned cotton. Just use a little tempura to darken the clouds on the right. We keep this hanging in the classroom.

Germination Bags: Seed to Seedling

We're learning about germination in Science and these little seed bags are a fun and easy experiment.
You'll need:
two baggies, 3-5 different types of seeds, 2 paper towels and a stapler.
Fold the paper towel in half twice to fit into the baggie snugly. Staple horizontally across the baggies about 2 inches from the bottom. (One staple for each seed.) Place a seed over each staple, keep in mind that it doesn't have to be touching the staple. Slowly add water to the paper towel until completely damp with no left over water in the bottom of the bags. What you are doing here is making two identical bags. Put one in a dark cool place and one in a warm sunny window. Keep a chart to record the growth. Here are pics of our sunny bag on day 8.

(carrots, watermelon, tomato, squash)

Thai Basil and other herbs

Now THIS is what Thai Basil should look like! I actually bought this bunch from a couple of farmers from Thailand, (who unfortunately have since moved back). Thai basil is delicious and can be used in all sorts of things. The whole leaves can be put on sandwiches, or you can shred the leaves into soups. Yum!

The point is that most fresh herbs should be kept on the counter in a bit of water. (Even the stuff you buy at the grocery store, although it will never last long no matter what you do!) The exception may be mint. I've found that if you put mint in too much water, the leaves start to turn black and it wilts. Just keep it in the fridge or grow your own! It grows like a weed. Keeping the herbs on the counter is so handy too. I can just pluck a few leaves, run it under water, and tear it up into whatever I'm using it for.

Reading Program for Home school

So even though I home school my 1st grader I still want to make his experience similar to what we had in public school, (minus the bullying, and gross lunches of course).

One thing we've been doing is the Pizza Hut reading program. I found out that they will send you the same kit that the teachers get if you home school, how cool is that?

Check it out here: http://www.bookitprogram.com/

Anywho, I was trying to come up with a creative way for him to track the number of books he had to read to earn the free pizza coupon. We decided that twelve books, (on his own time), could earn a coupon.

At first I thought about making a caterpillar head and adding a circle piece body for each book, but then I came up with this which seemed more fitting....I'll probably still use the caterpillar idea for the summer reading program.

So we made a pizza out of construction paper. A big round orange piece, then a smaller red piece and a slightly smaller yellow piece. Then we cut out red "pepperonis" and put them in the pepperoni holder underneath the pizza. Every time he finishes a book we write the title and author on the pepperoni and stick it to the pizza. When the pizza is full of pepperoni and the envelope is empty, we know it's pizza time!

You can make this a lot fancier if you'd like, personally, I prefer to let my son do most of the hands on stuff himself and try to make it fun instead of fancy.