Going Cross Country!

Over the Christmas break, I did lots of planning for 2011........being Australian, I still get into the "new school year being in January" mode!! That being said, my kids are American and I would really like to study each state of The United States of America before we leave for Australia. I LOVE the history and vast geography of this country and I am excited to learn all about it!

I really hope that some of you will join us on our journey as we try to get through a state a week. I'm still waiting on a few books to come in from Amazon but I was really inspired by this blog!

My plan is to post on Thursdays about what we've learned......I can't promise that it will be EVERY Thursday though - we'll see how we go. There will be downloads and crafts to go along with our trip!

I've also decided that we'll do the States in alphabetical order......MUCH easier for me to manage....:-)

In order to get us started, Here is the passport book that we'll be using. I also have the "See, Trace and Make" cards for each state done.

It would also be really cool to have a postcard or some other little souvenir thing from each state - is anyone interested in sending us a postcard? Please email me at musingsofme@yahoo.com if you are.....I'd love to make a special memory book for Channing about this whole "trip"!

I'd love to know if you have any good ideas/ crafts/ books about the state you live in for us to maybe use. I'm so excited about this and really do hope you'll find it fun too.

Look out next week for our first stop.......Alabama!! Home of many things........but did you know that Alabama was the state that helped the first spaceship go to the moon! I'll have a "Space unit" to post tomorrow - it's my favorite unit so far :-)

The cute graphics I used to make the "Trekking" button are from Scrappin Doodles. Thank you denyse for allowing me to use them!

Ice Skating

We made these ice-skates yesterday after reading Callie Cat, Ice Skater by Anne Kennedy. It's really cute book about a cat that loves to skate until she find out about a big skating competition. She practices and practices but learns that perhaps winning isn't everything.

I would have liked Channing to have done some sponge stamping or something on them before we put them together but we ran out of time.

Here's what you need to make them:

Cardboard cut in boot shapes

A Hole Punch

Ribbon or a shoelace to "lace" the boot".

2 Popsicle sticks for the "blade". We colored ours silver with a sharpie.

I'm going to link this to:

StART

Snowman jar

We made a little snowman jar today that goes along with our winter unit. It was so simple!

Here's what you need:

Baby food jar (or some other kind of jar)
White pom poms (or cotton balls)
Little buttons
Black felt, paper or foam for the hat
orange felt, paper or foam for the nose
Black paint or a marker for the eyes and mouth
Ribbon for the scarf

I don't really need to explain how to put it together because you can tell just by looking at it :-)

Happy New Year!

Today we read "The night before New Year's" written by Natasha Wing and then we made this Happy New Year picture. We discussed some goals we have for 2011 and Channing's top goal is to learn to ride the bicycle he got for Christmas.

Hope you all have a wonderful time tonight :-) I'll be back to the blogging world on Monday with a new unit!