If a kid enjoys reading, then I feel like they are pretty much guaranteed to get a better education than a child who attends school for 6 to 7 hours a day and does NOT enjoy reading. Kids forget 95% of the facts they learn anyway. (I just made that statistic up, but it feels right, doesn’t it?) But stories? Those last. Someone who reads confidently and comfortably can learn anything. As a bonus, reading about characters and storylines that authors have taken the time to carefully construct get lessons on life and character and morality. It is a rare day when I stop one of my children from reading a book for pleasure. Though, to be fair, this also true of when they are drawing, building, playing fantasy games, etc. Some parents never wake a sleeping baby. I never interrupt a happily playing child that is using their imagination.

Now, my first two children became readers fairly naturally. This may have a lot to do with the fact that I had a lot more time to practice with them when they were young. See this adorable reading log train I used with them. My third child was diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade. Getting him to be comfortable reading took a lot more work, but now he is going into 6th grade and reads ALL the time. He was literally bugging me just a few minutes about when the libray books I requested for him are coming in. (Answer, sometime between Tuesday and December. You never can tell.) My fourth child though…oh my poor fourth child. I went back to college to become a teacher when he was 6. I finished my degree, got my teachers license and am not working full time. The end result? He is going into fourth grade and was still reading at about a first grade level in January.

This needed to be fixed. In my opinion, the best way to teach a kid to read is to facilitate practice. I started by going back to basics. I learned from my dyslexic child the importance of decodable texts for building reading skills so I went back and redid my kindergarten and first grade suggestions on my Book Series for Kids page. Then I told him the plan. We were goign to make a reading chain, because who has time for a train in this busy world, and I was going to sit with him every day so we could read books (easy books) to add to his chain. His reward was that once he chain was as long as our hallway, he would get to pick a flavor of ice cream that we would have for dessert.

We used many of the books on the Kindergarten and First Grade series pages, though I’m realizing now that I forgot to add the ones in the picture above. Those are from Julia Donaldson’s Songbirds series (affiliate link) which is a bit expensive, but quite lovely. I will be saving them for any future potential grandkids.

What I was even more pleased by though was that when we finished our chain, my then third grade son did not want to stop. He kept going on his own. He made little rocketships and would add them as he read his easy readers by himself. At first, he was not adding the titles, but when I told him he should, he started doing it.

Even my 5th grade dyslexic child didn’t want to miss out on the action. He made his own reading chain too. At this point, he is obsessed with the Wings of Fire books and read one every 3 days or so, but for his reading challenge, he went back and read some books that were easy for him like Dragon Masters. It does not matter to me what they read, as long as they are reading.

Overall, I am very pleased with how this went. We are using different strategy over the summer, to ensure my youngest makes the most progress possible in this downtime. I’m hoping to share this with results at the end of summer. However, the reading chains were a very successful strategy during the busy school year time. It took some diligence when I was the one reading with him every day and helping him make his chain, but it was worth it. I did not even expect him to take over and keep doing it on his own. That was just a bonus. I would say he progressed about a full grade level during the 5 months of so that he was doing it, which still leaves him about a grade level behind his age and about a grade level from the really fun books.

All kids develop at their own pace, so I never want my kids to feel pressured. However, if we can use this summer to turn him into someone who really enjoys reading, I am all for it!

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: ~10 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Practically free

Materials:

• paper (preferably colored construction paper for visual appeal)
• scissors or paper cutter
• tape

Instructions:

1. Cut the paper into strips.
2. Acquire some easy books. Check your local library or my book series suggestions.
3. Everytime the child reads a book, either alone or with your help, write the title and add it to the chain!

That’s it! Happy reading!

Click here for more Starting to Read activities for kids.

Related Links

Best Books for Kids
Homemade Fun for Preschoolers
Learning Activities for Kids

The post Reading Chains appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

The reason why I wanted to include Pluto was that I also wanted to read my co-op class this hilarious book told from the point of view of the demoted planet. (My full review of Pluto Gets the Call is here.) As I read the book in class, I passed around the laminated planets for the kids to compare. This let them experience firsthand how much smaller Pluto is than all the others.

Even more impressive than the relative size of the planets to each other is their relative size compared to the Sun. My younger kids and I spent about 30 minutes measuring and painting a Sun a few days before class. In the co-op, I had the students guess how big they thought the Sun would be with their arms before I unveiled our creation for dramatic effect. When I originally did this Sun activity, I just accepted the fact that the whole Sun was not going to fit on my butcher paper. This time around, I wanted to make a big impact, so I used two pieces of butcher paper side by side to fit the whole thing. The results were pretty impressive.

Laying the planets, especially Pluto, on top of the Sun shows how incredibly small all of the planets are compared to our favorite star. Pluto may be the only dwarf planet in the group, but all of the planets are dwarfed by this monstrosity.

Relative Size of Pluto Details

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: about an hour altogether to laminate all the planets and measure and paint the Sun
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable planets. Butcher paper and paint for the Sun require a couple dollars in used supplies. Might be a bigger investment if you don’t already have butcher paper and paint lying around.

Materials

• Free printable major planets
• Free printable Pluto
• Butcher paper
• Yellow paint (we also added a little red paint to add some fun variation)
• Laminating sheets

Supplies

• laminator
• scissors
• paintbrushes
• Optional: Pluto Gets the Call (this book complements the activity so well!)

Instructions

1. First, print out all of the major planets and Pluto.
2. Cut out the planets and labels, then laminate them and cut out the laminated pieces.
   
3. Follow the instructions on this post to make a Sun on the same scale. The radius should be 33″.
   

Have fun getting a sense of the scale of our solar system!

Related Links

Science Activities for Kids
Astronomy Activities for Kids
Robotics Activities for Kids

The post Relative Size of Pluto Activity appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Originally, I didn’t start off by making them into alphabet displays. When my oldest was maybe 6 months old and we were practicing signing, I hung a few animals around the house….a frog, a deer, a panda, a wolf. When he would get a little fussy, we would walk around the house looking at all our animal friends and making the signs. It worked so well that if an unfamiliar visitor came over and wanted to hold him, I could pass him off and say, “Go show him the wolf.” Usually, he would be distracted from wanting me because he was so excited to see the animals.

Around his second birthday, I decided I wanted to put up an animal for every letter of the alphabet. I trimmed the calendar pictures to fit inside page protectors and used index cards and markers to make an uppercase letter to go with each picture. The original animal posters were taken from a couple of animal calendars my mother-in-law had given us. Obviously, there weren’t animals for every single letter, so I had to get creative and print a few pictures from Google Images to fill in the gaps. Ibex, anyone?

Here are the animals we ended up using based on the calendars we had.

A – Antelope

B – Bison

C – Condor

D – Deer

E – Elk

F – Frog

G – Goat

H – Hedgehog

I – Ibex (printed)

J – Jellyfish (printed)

K – Kangaroo

L – Leopard

M – Moose

N – Narwhal (printed)

O – Octopus (printed)

P – Panda

U – Urchin (printed)

V – Viper (printed)

W – Wolf

X – X-ray Fish (printed)

Y – Yak

Z – Zebra

Over the years, once my oldest became good at the uppercase letters, I went back and added the lowercase letters. These wall letter posters then stayed up for at least 7 years straight for my next 2 kids. I took them down for about a year when I got tired of looking at them after my third child mastered his letters, but then I put them up again for my youngest who has just recently mastered all his letters. Now is it is time they came down for good! Here are some of the ways we have used them over the years.

How to Use Wall Letter Posters

Visit the Animals

When my youngest was a toddler, I would carry him as we would walk around the house visiting the animals, especially when he was in a bad mood. Once I added the letters to the pictures, we just talked about that too. “What animals is this? Yes, it’s a frog! Ribbit, ribbit. Do you know what letter frog starts with? It starts with an F. Can you touch the F?” Simple, easy, effective. I didn’t do this with my youngest since I had taken the letters down and he was the oldest to finally master his letters at 5 and a half. My oldest knew them all by 3. My middle two kids were somewhere in the middle.

Hide and Seek

One of the easiest ways to use the wall letters is to just have your child go find a letter. You can say, “Where is the F?” If they need help, you can use warmer/colder style clues to direct them to the right vicinity. Once they are close, you can help them narrow down which one is right by giving hints like, “F says ffff. Which animal starts with ffff? Is it the fffff-frog or the guh-guh-goat?”

Another way to play hide and seek with the letters is to write the letter they are trying to find on a post-it note. Then they can move around the house carefully comparing the shapes of the letters until they find a match.

Treasure Hunt

This activity involves a bit of prep work, but the kids think it is so fun. Write each letter of the alphabet on its own index card or scrap of paper. Rearrange the letters so you have a stack of letters out of order. (Note: You do not have to use the entire alphabet…you can just write down a list of a few that you would like to practice that day.) The letter on the top of the stack is the start of your treasure hunt. Leave that one on your counter or taped to your mirror or somewhere to hand to your child at the start of the game. This is your “starter” letter.

Next go to your starter letter and tape the next letter in your stack near it, but facing the wall so the child can’t read the letter without taking it off the wall. This is the second letter in your treasure hunt. Go to this second letter and tape the third letter until you get to the end of the stack. When you reach the bottom of the stack you will have directed your child to the final letter. At this final letter, tape an index card with a direction to the “treasure.” I typically just hide a little plastic dinosaur then at the end tell the child where they can find the dinosaur. The last letter will have a message that says something like, “Look in the piano bench.”

This involves some prepwork, but it is worth it, because the kids love playing this game and don’t even realize that they are practicing letter recognition.

Mixed Up Letters

Once your child knows their letters fairly well, it can be fun to mix up some of the letters and see if your child notices. Put the N on the Moose and the M on the Narwhal and tell your child that a crazy alphabet goblin broke into the house and messed up some of the letters. This is a little bit advanced and honestly, my 5 year old still probably couldn’t do this, but if your child has mastered their alphabet and is familiar with their sounds, they will enjoy finding the mistakes!

These homemade wall letter posters might not be the most attractive part of your home decor, but I think they make it clear to your child that these squiggly things we call letters are actually pretty important. If you decide to put up some letters in your home, I hope you and your child find these activities helpful and enjoyable!

Related Links

Best Books for Kindergarten
Reading and Writing Activities
Pre-K Learning Activities

The post Fun Ways to Use Wall Letter Posters appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Now this process was not as simple as one might hope, but it wasn’t super complicated either. I did run into a few hiccups along the way that I had to overcome. My primary goal in writing this post is to document what I did in order to save myself some trouble in the future. If you are trying to figure out how to have your child’s book professionally printed, I hope it might be helpful to you too!

Choosing a Self-Publishing Company

To start, I looked into a number of online self-publishing companies. To be honest, my primary criteria was price. I knew I didn’t want to spend a lot. If it didn’t work out, then I would know not to use that company again in the future. Ultimately, I decided on lulu.com. Note that I am NOT affiliated with this company in any way.

I am very pleased with how my product turned out. Using a 15% off coupon, my total order including tax and shipping for one 9″ x 7″ small landscape hardcover book was $16.85. I recently placed an order for 9 more copies to “sell” to family members. Since I wills save on shipping costs, those books came out to $13 each.

Other options that I considered and you may want to look into were Blurb.com, BookBaby.com, Kindle Direct Publishing, and Barnes and Noble Press. As I mentioned, the main reason I went with Lulus was because it seemed to be the cheapest for the small hardcover book that I was looking to make.

Super-Concise Instructions

Simply put, there are only a few steps to creating a book. I will give a very unclear, but simple description of the steps here, then I will give detailed instructions for exactly what I did below.

1. Get your child’s artwork into a digital format (either by scanning or taking a picture of the pages).
2. Create a free account on the self-publishing site of your choice.
3. Put those pages in a document that you can save as a PDF. Add any extra pages you might want such as a copyright page or an about the author page.
4. Upload the document to the self-publishing website.
5. Create and upload another PDF document to specify how the front and back covers should look.

Detailed Instructions

Please note that as far as I can tell, you are going to need a laptop or computer to create the files you will need to have your book printed. You will not be able to do this on your phone. You will likely also need a moderate level of computer literacy. There are likely several fully acceptable ways to do these steps. I will explain how I did them, but that may not make the most sense for your particular situation.

Step 1: Getting your Child’s Artwork into a Digital Format

To even start creating your book, you will need to get your child’s glorious artwork on to the computer. I have a Brother compact desktop scanner which cost me almost $200 (full review here). Note that while I use this scanner all the time in my homeschool, it is definitely an investment. I will describe cheaper options below.

Using this scanner, I simply loaded my child’s work face down into the tray.

I then used the provided Control Center software to save the images as jpegs. I chose a resolution of 300 x 300 dpi and a scan type of 24 bit color. I made sure I knew where on my computer the files would be saved.

If you do not have my super amazing, multi-page scanner, the next best thing would be to scan them using a cheaper flatbed scanner. The downside to this option is that you have to scan them one page at a time. Here is a fairly inexpensive option at $89.

If you really just do not have access to a scanner, you can always just take pictures of the pages using a camera of phone. The downside to this option is that the quality of the pages will likely not be great. The whites will probably look more grey.

Once you have the images, if there are any little tweaks or fixes you want to do, now is the time to do them using photo-editing software. I used Adobe Photoshop, but that is a full tutorial on its own. However, my edits were minimal anyway. Many computers come with basic image editing software such as Paint.

Step 2: Get a Free Account on a Self-Publishing Site

As I mentioned above, I decided to create an account on lulu.com. You can do this by simply clicking the Register button in the upper right drop down menu.

Step 3: Create Your PDF Document

Assuming you decided to go with lulu.com as I did, once you have an account and are logged in, you will want to select Print Your Book.

Personally, I chose to have my child’s picture book printed as a “Photo Book” for the product type. This made sure that it had the best quality paper and ink. However, it appears that if I had chosen “Print Book,” I could have had the same book printed using Standard Ink and Standard paper for about $10 instead of $13. I am extremely satisfied with the way my Photo Book turned out, but in the future, I might try a Print Book, since maybe the extra quality did not make a big difference.

Next, you will be asked to select a goal for your book. One day I might see what happens if I click that publish button, but for now, I just wanted to print copies of my son’s book for our family. Therefore, I selected “Print Your Book.”

On the last section of the first page, you will want to enter in a Project Title under Book Details. You can also choose to fill in the Language and Category. I chose English and Childrens. Then click Design Your Project.

The first thing that happens is that you will be prompted to upload a PDF file with your interior pages in it. This might not be entirely straightforward so I will try to explain how I made my interior files below.

Note that one area in which I was briefly hung up was that the image above states that the page count can be from 2-800 pages. My son’s book was only about 10 pages long. Even with the title page, copyright page, dedication page, and About the Author page, it was only 14 pages. I kept having an issue when I tried to upload it until finally I figured out it was because it was too short. By looking through their creation guide it seems that maybe hardcover books cannot be under 24 pages, but I did not see this explicitly stated anywhere. I fixed this by making all the even pages in my document blank. That way the backs of all the pages are blank and my son’s story is only printed on the righthand side of the book. I like the way this turned out better anyway.

Another issue I had is that it is not immediately obvious what size books are available. This page on their site lists the different types of photobooks, however it doesn’t list their dimensions. The dimensions are important to know before you start creating your interior pages file. I found this page on the lulu blog which is a little more helpful. Basically, I decided that I wanted a Small Landscape, 9″ x 7″ book. Another inexpensive option is the Small Square which is 8.5″ x 8.5″. Lulu’s pricing page may also help you decide what size you book you would like.

According to the Lulu PDF Creation Guide, which is linked to in the section where it asks you to upload your interior pages, you may want to add 0.125″ bleed dimensions along each edge. They state that a 6 x 9 in book should have interior pages that are 6.25 x 9.25 in. Therefore, since I want to create a book that is 9″ x 7″, I want my interior pages to have a dimension of 9.25″ x 7.25″ to make sure that none of the images are cropped.

According to the Lulu PDF Creation Guide, you also want to allow safety margins of 0.5 inches in addition to the trim size of 0.125 inches. If I understand this correctly, in total, your document should have margins of 0.625 inches. If you have a large book, you may also want to allow extra white space near the inside edges of the book to account for the “gutter” that is formed along the binding. Since my book is not many pages, I did not worry about the gutter.

So to summarize, if you are making a 9″ x 7″ small landscape book, you will want to create a document that is 9.25″ by 7.25″ with 0.625″ margins. There are likely many programs you could use to make this document, such as Microsoft PowerPoint. However, I used the free Libre Office generic version of PowerPoint called LibreOffice Impress. You can download Libre Office for free here.

To make the document, I first opened LibreOffice Impress. Then from the menu bar, I selected Slide, then Properties as shown below.

From the properties menu, you can select the size of the page and the margins.

You may want your first interior page to be a copyright page. I did not look into how best to copyright a self-published book, since I am not planning on selling my child’s work. However, I found that the simplest way is to write “Copyright @ Year Author’s Name All Rights Reserved.” You can delete the text boxes that you do not want on the slide and add any additional ones. Here is a sample copyright page. If you click on the triangle to the right of the window, it expands a panel you can use to change the font and font size.

If you would like a dedication page, you can repeat this process of inserting a textbox on a blank slide to make a page for the dedication. You can right-click the panel on the left and select New Slide to make new slides. I usually delete the text boxes that are automatically inserted. Another option is to make one blank slide, delete the text boxes and then copy and paste that blank slide as many times as you want.

Remember that if you want the text to appear on the right hand pages only, you will need to leave the even pages blank.

When you are ready, you can start inserting the images that you scanned earlier. To do this, select Insert from the main menu bar, then choose, Image. You will need to know where your image files than you scanned or took pictures of are located.

Once your image is inserted, you can crop or rotate it if you like using the menu bars above the slide.

You will want to repeat this process with all of your images. Remember to leave all the even slides empty if you want the backs of the pages to be blank.

At the end, if you like, you can add an extra slide for an About the Author Page. I think this is a nice touch. You can insert text boxes and images to make the slide look how you want.

At any point during this process, you can choose File from the main menu, then select Save As to save your file as a LibreOffice file. It will have an extension odp. It is a good idea to save your work frequently.

When you are all done, you will want to export your file as a PDF to upload to the Lulu website. You can do this by using the File Menu, then Export As, then Export as PDF.

You will have some options on how you would like to save your PDF. The most important box to look at it so make sure your image quality is atleast 300 DPI.

Step 4: Upload your Document to the Website and Choose Options

Now you are ready to upload your interior pages document on the Lulu website. Simply click where it says Upload Your File, then find where you saved the PDF document on your computer.

Note that I received some warnings when I uploaded my file. I spent a long time trying to figure out what might be wrong. In the end, I decided to just have one book printed to see how it turned out. At least in my case, the book turned out great, so I wouldn’t worry too much about these warnings. Note that it also has the green checkmark saying that my book was uploaded successfully.

Once you have successfully uploaded your book, you will be able to scroll down and choose your options.

Note that the website already determined that my book is a Small Landscape (9 x 7 in.) book based on the dimensions of the uploaded file. It also knows the page count. I chose to have Color Premium pages, which gave me the option of 80# Coated White paper. If I had selected “Print Book” instead of “Photo Book” in the first step, I would have had options for less expensive Standard ink and paper as well.

I chose to have my book printed as a hardcover with a matte finish. My final book cost is $13, not including tax and shipping. Again, if you had selected “Print Book” instead of “Photo Book,” you would have less expensive options to choose from as well. For example, a paperback book of this size, even printed with premium ink and paper, was under $6 when I played around with the options.

Step 5: Create Your Cover and Upload it to the Site

The final step is to design your cover.

The website give you a number of options. Personally, I just chose to use LibreOffice Impress to create my file from scratch, as I did with my interior files.

To start, download the template that they provide. This will show you how the file should look, though admittedly, it might be a little confusing at first.

What I took from this document is that I want to create a file with is 20″ x 8.75.” Around the entire document is a 0.75″ border that will get wrapped around the book. In addition to that is a safety margin of 0.375.” That means the total margin of the document you create should be 1.125.” Additionally, there is area near the spine that you will want to avoid. That area has a width of 0.375″ + 0.25″ + 0.375″ = 1″. If you would like, you could try putting the title sideways along the 0.25″ spine, but I did not try this. It is such a narrow area that I thought there was a good chance it would not be centered perfectly and might look weird. Next time, I may try that.

To create this file in Libre Impress, follow the same procedure as before of creating new file, then opening Properties under the Slide menu. If you are making a book the same size as mine, set the width to 20″, the height to 8.75″, and all four margins to 1.125″.

If your new file was created with “Click to Add Title” and “Click to Add Text” boxes, you can go ahead and delete those. The next step is entirely optional, but I decided to create a temporary rectangle to block out where the spine would be to make sure my image did not overlap with this region. You may actually want the picture to continue into this region so it is entirely up to you.

If you do decide to include this rectangle, you can use the rectangle tool to create an arbitrary rectangle, then change the Position and Size values to put it in the correct place. It should be located at an X position of 8.375″. This is half the document width (10″) minus half the spine width (0.5″) minus a margin size (1.125″). The Y position should be -1.125″ (negative the margin size). The width should be the spine width (1″) and the height should be the document height (8.75″).

Now you are ready to add your front and back covers! You can use images, text boxes, whatever you like. I chose to use the cover my son made as the front cover. Then for the back cover, I cropped one of the images from the story to remove the text, then added a text box to provide a short summary of the story (also written by my son) as would be found on a traditional book.

Once you are done placing your images, DON’T FORGET TO DELETE THE BLUE BOX! Now you can select Export as PDF from the File menu. Again the only number which really matters is that you want the resolution to be atleast 300 DPI. Make sure you pay attention to where you save the file.

Now that you have your file ready and you know where it is saved, you can upload it to the Lulu website using the option “Upload Cover File.”

When I did this, I got a warning that my resolution might be less than 200 pixels per inch. However, I ignored this and it turned out okay.

Next you will be able to preview your book. Check out all the pages and make sure you are happy with it!

If you want, you can download your Print Ready Files and check them out as well. Next, select Review Your Book.

You are almost done! Click the checkbox to confirm your specifications and files. Then click Add to Cart!

When I did this, it told me my book was added to my cart, but it didn’t actually take me to my cart. To get to your cart, click the little cart icon at the top of the screen.

From your cart, you will be able to change the number of copies you want, as well as select your shipping and payment options.

You are done! Congratulations! These books took a couple weeks to get to me, so don’t expect delivery to be super fast. However, I am really happy with the final product. It was a bit of work to figure everything out, but I am happy I spent the time to create a product I will love forever. I am sure there are alternative methods that could be used to create the necessary files, but if you are trying to figure out how to have your child’s book professionally printed, I hope this post has been helpful to you!

Happy bookmaking!

Related Links

Learning Activities for Kids
Best Books for Kids
Free Printables

The post How to Have Your Child’s Book Professionally Printed appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

If you are low on time, a simpler way to do the activity described below would just be to grab some play-doh or clay and a couple chopsticks or even pencils. Do an image search for “Cuneiform alphabet chart” then have your kids use the chart to write a short message. Know that any chart you find will be an oversimplification, but it wills till get the point across to your kids.

My kids all tried to write their names. In the image above, I wrote “mama” using the chart found in the Story of the World Ancient Times Activity Book. There is another chart in our History Quest: Early Times Study Guide which I suspect is slightly more accurate, but I thought it might be a little two complicated for my younger kids.

I wanted to make the activity a little more realistic for my kids so we made some homemade air dry clay and colored it brown with coffee. I’m hoping I can get a tutorial up just for the clay before too long, but for now, I’m including that step-by-step process below.

Also, we could have just used chopsticks as is, but I decided to carve the ends a bit with a knife so that the shapes made would be a little more triangular. Neither of these added steps are necessary, but I felt like they would help my kids remember:

1. Ancient Mesopotamians wrote their cuneiform in clay tablets.
2. They used reeds which left triangular markings.

Overall my kids had a great time. My 10 year old even went above an beyond and basically wrote an entire paragraph for me to decipher.

Ancient Mesopotamian Cuneiform Activity Details

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: about 30 minutes to make the clay and shape chopsticks, 15 minutes for kids to write name in clay
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $3 in used supplies

Materials

• 1 cup baking soda
• 1 cup corn starch
• 1/2 cup coffee grounds or instant coffee crystals (the pin at the top is made with instant coffee, this tutorial shows grounds – note that the instant crystals give a more uniform color, but are more likely to stain hands, clothes, and surfaces)
• 1.5 cups water
• chopsticks

Supplies

• knife
• 1 cup measuring cup
• 1/2 cup measuring cup (not pictured)
• pot for heating on stove
• spoon for stirring
• measuring glass
• stove

Instructions

1. Measure 1 cup of cornstarch and place it in the pot.
   
2. Measure 1 cup baking soda and add it to the pot.
   
3. Stir the baking soda and cornstarch together.
4. Measure 1.5 cups of warm water.
   
5. Measure a half cup of coffee grounds or instant coffee crystals. You can use more less depending on the color clay you want. The instant coffee gives a more uniform color while the coffee grounds do not fully dissolve leaving a more spotted, grainy look. However, note that even if you use ground coffee, when it dries, the “clay” has a more uniform color.
   
6. Stir the coffee grounds or instant coffee crystals into the water.
   
7. Stir the dark liquid into the cornstarch and baking soda mixture.
   
8. Heat the mixture on the stove over low heat stirring frequently.
   
9. While the mud clay mixture is heating, start working on your writing instruments. First, break the chopsticks apart.
   
10. Use a knife to sharpen the edges of the fatter end of the chopsticks.
    
11. Don’t forget to stir your clay!
    
12. Next, cut off the tip of one of the edges to form a small triangle.
    
    This images has lines drawn to make the carved shape more clearly visible.
    
13. Repeat the above steps until you have desired number of writing instruments (ideally one for each child).
14. Continue stirring your clay. You will know it is done when it has the consistency of mashed potatoes. This should take about 10 or 15 minutes. Note that it will thicken a little as it cools.
    
15. Pour the clay onto a plate to allow it to cool.
    
16. After it cools, shape it into a block and cut it into the desired number of slabs (one for each child).
    
17. Have each child take their portion and mold it into one or several clay tablets. Then they can use their writing “reeds” to make some triangular marks in the clay. They can either make their own designs or use an alphabet chart to write a secret message for you to decode.
    
    Note that even if you use the ground coffee instead of the instant coffee, when it dries it has a more uniform color. I’m really not sure why that is!
    

I hope your kids have fun being scribes with this fun, hands-on ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform activity!

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I was impressed by how seriously my kids took the grinding. They worked on it off and on for 3 days. Initially my plan was that we would grind enough flour by hand to make bread. However, after a few days, it became clear that we just weren’t cut out for the job. The kids would grind for about 5 minutes at a time until their hands got tired. Those wheat berries are hard to grind!

In the end, they only got a couple tablespoons of flour. This was after the kids worked at if for at least a half hour all together. I even tried for a few minutes. However, after seeing exactly how slow this process was going, I realized I would need to change my original plan. We decided to use a blender to process the rest of the wheat berries. The experience definitely gave us all a newfound appreciation for modern technology!

The real fun in this activity was making the bread. We “foraged” in our pantry for nuts and berries. We checked and found that both salt and butter were around back in Neolithic times. Then we added water to our flour and stirred in the desired mix-ins.

Since things like yeast and baking powder weren’t around during the Stone Age, we didn’t use those items. We talked about it in advance and knew that our bread was going to be pretty dense. In the end, the kids thought the results ranged from “not bad” to “literally the worst bread I’ve ever tasted.” Personally, I thought it tasted pretty good (though I did add A LOT of dried fruit to my serving).

The kids ended up adding some honey on top of their baked Stone Age bread. We looked it up and learned that honey was in fact around during the Neolithic Era. In the end, the kids had fun, all the bread got eaten, and we learned a lot. What more can a homeschool mom ask for?

Stone Age Bread Activity Details

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: Depends on how long you want to attempt grinding. Once you have the flour, about 20 minutes to prepare bread and 20 minutes to bake.
Difficulty: Hard to grind, easy if you use a blender once you realize it’s hard
Cost: About $10 for a bag of wheat berries, though you do not need the full amount.

Materials

• a mortar and pestle
• pizza stone (or cookie sheet)
• a blender or food processor (optional, but very useful!)

Ingredients

• wheat berries (depends on how much bread you want to make, but at least a half cup)
• nuts
• dried fruit (we used rainins, cranberries, and dried cherries)
• butter
• salt
• honey

Instructions

1. The main point of this activity is to show your kids how hard it is to grind flour by hand. Therefore, use either a mortar and pestle or a larger and smaller rock and let your kids try to make flour out of the wheat berries. You will likely need to use a small number of wheat berries at a time. We found that if we put too many in at one time, it became unmanageable and they would fly out everywhere.
   
   
2. At some point your kids will become tired of grinding. Take a look at how much you got and make sure to note how hard it was to get that small amount of flour.
   
3. After your kids get tired of grinding, you use your blender or food processor to grind more flour. Make sure your kids know that you are leaving the Stone Age and entering the modern world. You can ask questions like, “So why do you think the Stone Age people didn’t just use a blender?”
   
   
4. After you produce flour using modern technology, make sure you take the time to notice how much flour you got in such a short amount of time compared to using the mortar and pestle. Pause for a moment to appreciate the conveniences of our modern lifestyles that we take for granted.
   
5. Once you have a sufficient amount of flour (I used about 1/3 cup per person), get your add-ins ready. We pretended to forage for nuts and berries, by getting them from our pantry. Again you are making your child aware of how much easier it is now to find food than for prehistoric people. Since butter and salt were also available during the Neolithic Era, feel free to include those as add-ins as well.
   
6. Have your child begin to make their dough by adding water. Start with a small amount of water the have them add more gradually until they get a consistency they like.
   
7. Next comes the fun part. Kids can add in whatever they want to make their dough. I recommend adding at least some salt to increase the chances your kids will find it edible.
   
   My daughter used the mortar and pestle again to grind up some almonds. I didn’t see any reason why Stone Age people couldn’t have done that as well.
   
8. Next bake the bread on a pizza stone or cookie sheet. Note that Stone Age people would have had to put a rock over a fire pit or made an oven out of something like rocks and clay. You will have to check your bread with a toothpick to see if it is done. We did 375 degree for roughly 20 minutes for our bread “cookies” that were about a half inch thick.
   
   
9. Lastly, see what your kids think! Some of my kids thought it was okay while one kid in particular didn’t really like it at all. It turns out Neolithic people harvest honey. Therefore, we didn’t feel bad sweetening out bread with a little honey. Everyone knows honey makes everything delicious.

Have fun being Neolithic chefs for a day!

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In our family, we have done the 4 year Story of the World cycle one time through. This coming fall, we are planning to start again with Ancient History. Since summer is about to begin, I thought, why not start a little early? That way we can take our time and go nice and slow through the first part of our history book.

I don’t know how successful I will be at keeping up this spirit of hands-on learning, but our pilot event was a huge success. As soon as we started learning about prehistory (the period of history before the invention of writing), I knew that I wanted to do cave painting. How exactly to do the cave painting and have it be meaningful took a little bit of thought.

At first, I was thinking we could find some natural clay and mix it with water to make the paints, but then that seemed like too much work. I wanted to keep things simple. Then I thought about just putting some butcher paper on the wall and letting the kids finger paint, but that seemed a little below the educational value I was hoping for.

To start, I decided to up the educational value by learning about some real cave paintings. First, we read Discovery in a Cave by Mark Dubowski which thankfully was available for free through our library’s digital lending system. (Libraries are currently closed due to the pandemic.) I HIGHLY recommend this book. It is informative, not too long, and the story itself is extremely appealing to children.

For a fun treat, afterwards we watched the very first episode of Carmen Sandiego called The Stolen Smile. I happened to recall that this episode described the Lascaux Caves which are the same caves featured in the book above.

So that my kids would be able to look at inspiration WHILE they were painting, I also created a few pages with pictures of real cave paintings. This printable features 3 famous caves around the world. I specifically chose ones of handprints and simple animals, since I knew my kids would be able to replicate images such as these.

My oldest decided to use a stick to paint some of his drawings. I thought this was a good idea since simple tools like this were available to prehistoric people as well.

Overall, I am really pleased with how well our afternoon of learning went. Seeing the happiness on my kids faces while they were enjoying a memorable educational experience was well worth the time invested. I don’t always tie in hands-on activities to our history, but I’m planning to try to make an effort more often!

Cave Painting Activity Details

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: 10-30 minutes of prep (depending on if you want the overhang or not)
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $2 in used supplies

Materials

• a large cardboard box (or two) for painting on
• a smaller cardboard or cereal box for creating structural triangles (optional, only if creating an overhang)
• washable tempera paint in black and red (or you could be more colorful)
• plates or containers for holding paint
• tape to hang cardboard (I found painters tape to work well enough for the activity, though our “wall” fell down overnight)
• optional: free printable educational document for inspiration

Instructions

1. If you haven’t already, first you will need to open up your cardboard boxes so that they lay flat.
2. If you would like to create an overhang with structural triangles so the child can paint on this portion, cut off the excess flaps from your smaller box.
   
   It should look like this after you finish:
   
3. Next, cut this smaller box into width-wise strips an inch or two wide.
   
   You will need at least 8 total.
   
4. Fold a strip into a right triangle and tape it together. It does not need to be symmetric, though the ones I used were pretty close. One of the angles in your triangle that is not the square angle should be the angle you would like your top flap to overhang.
   
5. Using this first triangle as a guide, make one just like it.
   
6. Repeat step 5 until you have 8 close to identical triangles.
   
7. Use the triangles to prop up one of the box flaps and tape it in place as shown.
   
8. Continue taping triangles in the same orientation onto the flaps along one side of the box. You will need at least 2 triangles per flap.
   
9. Next apply tape to the side of the triangle that will attach to the wall as shown.
   
10. Repeat above process to add tape to all of the triangles.
    
11. Next have someone help you tape the boxes onto a wall with the flap at the top.
    
    From the side, the flap will look like this:
    
12. If you are using the inspiration sheets, post them somewhere nearby so the kids can look at them as they paint.
    
13. Set out paint for the kids to use. Start with a little bit and add more as necessary. Since I have 4 kids, I decided to set out 2 plates of each color so there would be less fighting.
    
    

Now you are ready! Let the kids have fun!

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Of course, I started our summer of astronomy fun with a family viewing of Space Camp. (Seriously, how is that movie not more popular?) I was instantly transported back to my 8 year old self, aware that the plot was far-fetched, but loving it nonetheless. My own kids were riveted. Personally, I think it is a fantastic family movie (but be aware that there is at least one use of the word “shit” and a reference to big hands that had my husband and I glancing at each other). Thankfully, the “mature” content went over my kids heads. They loved it.

To study space, we’ve also watched some Magic School Bus episodes related to planets and meteors and a couple episodes of Cosmos on Netflix. Each night my kids and I go outside and spend about 10 minutes looking at the sky before bed. We started out observing the moon every day so that we would know if it was waxing or waning. My older 2 kids can now reliably find the Big Dipper, Jupiter, Mars, sometimes the Little Dipper if it’s dark enough, and the stars Polaris, Arcturus, and Vega. We use the app, SkyView Free, to check that we’ve identified correctly. In that app, you can ask it to tell you where the International Space Station (ISS) and other fun things are.

Every night over the past couple weeks, my son has been disappointed that the ISS is never in view. I remembered that once while we were camping several years ago, my husband thought he saw the International Space Station, a bright light arching across the sky. I was skeptical it was actually the space station and not a plane or other satellite. When we got home the next day, I looked it up. He was right. The ISS had been predicted to cross over the sky in our area at about 9:30 pm, the exact time my husband had spotted it.

When my son became fixated on spotting the International Space Station, I knew it was a wish I could make happen. Unfortunately, in the near future all the viewing windows near us were at around 4 in the morning. To my kids, I think the middle-of-the-night aspect made the whole adventure more appealing.

This morning, I woke my 6 and 8 year olds up at 4:15 am and we went outside with blankets and flashlights. The space station was supposed to be visible from 4:23 to 4:26 am. At 4:26 am, I told my kids, “I’m sorry, guys. I guess we missed it. I don’t know what happened. Maybe the moon is too bright tonight or something.”

Just then, my 8 year old yelled, “There it is!!!” He was right. It was about 3 minutes later than I expected, but we were able to watch the bright light traverse across the sky. There is no way we could have missed it. Now that we’ve spent the past couple weeks looking at planes and smaller satellites, I understand how my husband knew it was the ISS on that camping trip all those year ago.

“There are people in there, you know,” I said to my kids. “Really?” asked my 6 year old, skeptically. Yep, it’s mind-blowing for me too, kid. If you’re looking for a resource to learn more about the ISS with your kindergarten or elementary-aged kids, my family enjoyed poring over the 4 page spread on the International Space Station in the Big Book of Rockets and Spacecraft.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~15 minutes (unfortunately, this will almost certainly cut into your kids sleeping time)
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free

Supplies:

• A computer to use NASA’s Spot the Station website
• An alarm clock (if you need to wake up early in the morning, though in some places, it might be visible after sunset instead of before sunrise)
• Flashlights (to reduce light pollution, don’t turn on any outdoor lights)
• Jackets (unless you live somewhere that it’s warm at night)
• Shoes (you don’t want to be hunting for them in the middle of the night)
• Blanket (if you’ll be sitting on the ground)
• Compass (optional, but you’ll want to at least have a general idea of the directions)
• Smartphone (optional, we didn’t use one during our viewing, but an app like SkyView Free will tell you exactly where the ISS is)

Instructions:

1. Go to the website, NASA’s Spot the Station.
2. Click on the magnifying glass on the map.



3. Type in your location. The map should take you to your area. You want to find the blue pin closest to your exact location. Yellow circles are basically blue pins that are so close together they’ve been combined, but you can click on them to see the individual blue pins.



4. Once you’ve clicked on the blue pin closest to you, click the link called “View Sighting Opportunities.”



5. Now you get to analyze your opportunities. There are 3 things to take into consideration. One is the Date column which lists the viewing time. Personally, as a night owl, I would prefer an evening viewing to an early morning viewing, but that wasn’t an option for my family in the foreseeable future. The second is the Visible column which lists how many minutes the Space Station will be visible. Longer is typically better as it decreases the chances of missing it. The third consideration is the Max Height. This basically specifies how high in the sky the Space Station will get. Higher is better, since it decreases the chances that your view will be obstructed by houses, trees, and anything else that might be in the way.
   We chose this morning to view the ISS because the duration was the longest it would be in the near future and the maximum height was 47 degrees, which was considerably higher than many of the other opportunities.
6. Now that you’ve chosen a date and time, you need to figure out which way to look. The Appears column tells you which direction the ISS will appear and the Disappears column tells you which direction it is headed. You can use a compass if you are not sure. For us, the ISS appeared in the west and headed towards NNE.
7. The night before you plan to view the ISS, you have some planning to do. Set an alarm if needed. Plan to be outside and observing at least 5 to 10 minutes before the expected pass. We were lucky in that the ISS passed 3 minutes after the expected time. If it had passed 3 minutes before, we probably would have missed it, because I wasn’t expecting the timing to be off at all.
8. Especially if you will be waking up in the middle of the night, gather all your supplies before you go to bed. Put yours and your kids’ jackets and shoes together with a blanket to sit on and some flashlights. You don’t want to turn on any outdoor lights when you go outside to keep your eyes adjusted to the dark.
9. About 15 minutes before the pass, make sure everyone is awake and getting their shoes and jackets on.
10. Head outside, set up your blanket, and lay down to view the stars.
11. Monitor the whole path the ISS is expected to take, keeping an especially close watch on the “Appear” direction.
12. Be patient! I was ready to give up and go inside when my son suddenly spotted the ISS.

Have fun viewing the International Space Station!

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As a research scientist and lifelong nerd, I love anything that gets my kids excited about science. If they have smiles and looks of amazement on their faces while we are doing science, I pretty much consider the whole day a success. This cloud in a jar activity was definitely a win for us. When I told my kids we were going to create our own mini-clouds, they looked at me like I was crazy. Within minutes, they were begging me to do it again.

Although getting my kids to say, “Woah, that’s cool!” is always my ultimate goal, it’s great if they can pick up a few science-y concepts or learn a few big words along the way. For this cloud in a jar science activity, these are the science concepts I tried to present to my kids. Even if my 6 year old only remembers the first item on the list, I’ll be happy. I’m hoping my 8 year old will remember a little more, but at the very least, I know he’s gained some familiarity that will serve him well in the future, even if it is just a vague memory.

1. Clouds are made of water.
2. In order for the liquid water on earth to turn into clouds, it has to first become a gas known as water vapor. (A process called evaporation).
3. To form clouds, the water vapor has to collect, or condense, into tiny droplets of water. (A process called condensation.)
4. In order for the water vapor to condense, it needs something to condense onto, like dust (or smoke or hairspray, in our case).

This activity was so quick and easy, we did it at least a dozen times. By the end of the day, even my 4 year old was saying, “Clouds are made by con-den-sa-tion.” I don’t think he actually understood what he was saying, but it was still pretty cute.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~5 minutes — most of that time is waiting for the water from the sink to get hot!
Difficulty: Easy — but adult supervision required for the hot water and using a match.
Cost: Practically free

Materials:

• Hot water (about 1 cup per cloud. It doesn’t need to be boiling…we just used the hot water from the sink.)
• A match
• 3 or 4 ice cubes

Supplies:

• A jar (we used a 4 cup mason jar)
• A lid (we just used the circle part of the mason jar lid and not the canning ring)
• Optional: A small cutting board, pot holder, or other insulating surface if you’ll be doing the experiment on something cold, like granite.

Instructions:

1. First, pour 1 cup of hot water into a 4 cup jar. The amounts do not need to be precise. If you have a bigger or smaller jar, simply fill it about 1/4 to 1/3 full of hot water. The water also does not need to be boiling. Hot water from the tap is sufficient. If you DO use boiling water, it will make it harder to see your cloud as the jar will fill with steam and water will condense on the sides of the jar.



2. Have a grown up light a match and place it inside the far. Hold it there for a second or two. Don’t burn your fingers!



3. Drop the match into the jar.



4. Place the lid on the jar (it doesn’t need to screw on, just keep the water vapor from escaping). Then place ice cubes on top of the lid.



5. Wait for 1 to 2 minutes. (We waited for 2 minutes each time, but there was clearly a cloud formed by about 1 minute.)



6. Observe the cloud inside your jar. If there ISN’T a cloud inside your jar, it probably means you don’t have enough water vapor or smoke. Try again, but this time, go a little faster. Try not to give your water time to cool off before you light the match. Put the lid on right away after you drop the match, so the smoke doesn’t have time to escape. If you’re doing the experiment on a cool surface, you may want to use a pot holder or trivet to keep heat from escaping through the bottom.



7. Take the lid off the jar.



8. Watch in amazement as the cloud escapes from the jar!

If you don’t want to use a match, you can try using hair spray. The water vapor can condense onto the particulates of hairspray instead of the smoke. We found our clouds with the match to be slightly more impressive, but the hairspray definitely worked as well. Just remember to be fast when putting on the lid and adding ice after spraying a little hairspray inside the jar.

Enjoy creating your own miniature cloud!

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My kids and I have also done the lemon juice invisible ink experiment in the past. It works pretty well, but the one downside is that you really need to apply a lot of heat (like with an iron or hot plate) to get it to work. In my experience, holding the paper over a lightbulb just doesn’t cut it. That means I end up being the one to reveal the message while my kids stand by and watch. The nice thing about this color-changing invisible ink experiment is that no heat is required. Instead, it uses a homemade acid/base indicator to reveal the secret message.

I knew that I wanted to use a natural indicator (like red cabbage juice or turmeric) along with a basic solution. As you can see, I tried several different combinations before I found one that I was really happy with. It turns out a solution containing only baking soda and water really has a remarkable change in color when used with the turmeric/rubbing alcohol indicator. (See below for detailed instructions.)

The kids had such a great time making and reading secret messages. The best part…even the baby could reveal the message on his own since no irons or hotplates were involved. (Though I will warn you that if you’re worried about stains, maybe have them use paintbrushes instead of paper towels!)

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~30 minutes (including about 15 minutes to let paper dry in the middle)
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Under $10 (much, much less in used supplies). We had everything on hand, but turmeric can be a little expensive if you have to buy more than you will use. Maybe borrow a teaspoon from a friend!

Materials:

• water (1/2 cup)
• baking soda (1 Tablespoon)
• paper
• q-tips (or a paintbrush) to apply invisible ink
• rubbing alcohol (1/2 cup)
• turmeric (1 teaspoon)
• paper towels (or a paintbrush) to apply color-changing solution

Supplies:

• measuring glass
• measuring spoons
• spoon for stirring

Instructions:

1. First, add 1 Tablespoon of baking soda to 1/2 cup of water.

2. Stir the baking soda into the water to make the “invisible ink”.

3. Use q-tips (or paintbrushes) to draw a picture with the invisible ink on paper.

4. While you are waiting for your paper to dry, mix up your color changing-solution. First, add 1 teaspoon of turmeric to 1/2 cup of rubbing alcohol.

5. Stir the turmeric into the rubbing alcohol. (Note: The solution can stain a little bit. I used a white plastic bowl, which was not the smartest, because it was a little difficult to clean afterwards. You might want to use a glass bowl.)

6. After the paper is dry, use a paper towel (or paintbrush) to apply the color-changing solution to the paper to reveal the secret message! (Note: We used paper towels, but our hands were all a little orange for a few hours afterward, so you might want to use a paintbrush instead!)

Enjoy reveling in the mysteries of science!

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