Take Little Passports to lunch with you

Okay, so you know how cool the Little Passports program is, right?  After all, we used them in our homeschool last year, and I was forever talking about what we got in our packages for each country.  

In fact, I loved them so much, I became an affiliate for them.  So when you click through a banner here on my site and order from Little Passports, I get a tiny kickback from them.  

When I got an email this morning telling me about the back to school stuff they are currently offering, I knew I had to share it with you.  

Little Passports School Supplies

Click on the School Supplies bar at the top of the LP landing page.  Aren't they cute?  I love the idea of writing notes on the chalkboard inside the lunch box.  --Of course that would be for those Good Moms.  You know, the ones who never ever say things like, "Yikes, you're leaving for school in 3 minutes and I haven't packed your lunch yet!"  Not that I did that this morning or anything.  Nope.  Not me.  :whistling:  Don't know what you're talking about.  Hey, she took a lunch to school, and that's what counts, right?  

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Fun News

I've been accepted as an affiliate for Little Passports!  All year long, we've had fun with them, as we've learned about different countries.  (You can click HERE to see us enjoying the contents and projects.)

Whether you're looking for a fun summer enrichment, or something to supplement next year's homeschool curriculum, or you just have a kid who loves to get mail, I hope you'll check out Little Passports.  We have been very happy with their products.

Not only to they have an Around The World program, but they also have a 50 States program, as well!

Homeschool Weekly Wrap Up - End of Year

Well, for most of us, it's the end of the year.  Hannah still goes the entire month of June.  But the high schoolers are finished, and the homeschoolers are just finishing up dribs and drabs at this point.

Brianna didn't have coconut on hand when we were studying Australia, but Paul came to the rescue, remembering to pick some up so she could make ANZAC biscuits a little late.  (Australia New Zealand Army Corps--ANZAC)  The pink food coloring was her own addition.

Our Little Passports friend for Antarctica, a penguin.  

This is what happens when a sewing mama has to give a map test.  

And here are my students, studiously labeling all the countries they can identify from memory.  

We did a pretest at the beginning of the year, and a post test at the end.  

I love this.  

I can quantify something.  I can point to it and say, "Look!  Jack learned 20 countries this year!  Eli learned 25!  And Brianna learned a whopping 56, thank you JetPunk."  

I'm really proud of them.

Turns out, maps weren't the only things that changed from beginning to end of the school year.  They traced their hands the first week of school, and I retraced them this week.  It's amazing how much they grow in such a short time.  

Our last art project of the school year.  Salted watercolor snowflakes

(or random camouflage painting, if you're Eli)

Now we're on to the business of cleaning out binders, organizing the school room, and getting rid of things we don't need.  

Oh, and finishing up a last spelling test.

Before we spend a whole lot of time this summer doing this.  

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Weekly Wrap Up - Antarctica week one

Originally, when I read through the list of countries we'd be studying this year, I thought, "Antarctica?  What is there to learn about Antarctica?  There's nothing there!"  

I was wrong.

It's the forgotten continent in many ways.  In fact, Sam told me he "corrected" his teacher when she told her class that Australia was the least populated continent.  I can't imagine Teach was too thrilled about that, ya know?  

There is no currency, no government, no religion, no capitol, no flag.

So what did we do this week?  

Well, the kids colored coloring sheets for the fair.

Studying about arctic and antarctic animals, we did an experiment to illustrate the insulating power of blubber.  

We froze a block of ice in a mixing bowl to use as our "iceberg."  

Then we put a thick layer of shortening inside a vinyl glove to represent blubber.

Then we put both hands on the iceberg; one hand on the blubber and one hand on the ice, to see which one was colder.  

It's one thing to read, "Blubber helps keep penguins warm," but it's way more memorable when you can feel the difference yourself.  

I love it when my kids say, "Can I go get a magnifying glass?"  

Let me think about that... "YES!"

Eli discovered lines and bubbles in his ice.

Someone dropped our iceberg, which broke into bergs and growlers all over the kitchen floor, but we still managed to float the largest piece in the sink, and were surprised at just how much of the berg is below the surface of the water, compared to how much is above the water line.  

Since Antarctica has no flag, we designed our own flags for it.  

Brianna's stripes represent the land under the ice, and the upper right is an iceberg in the water.  The upper left is 2 types of penguins.  

Eli showing his draft version, and a rotten picture of Jack with his painted flag.  I told them they could use any media for this project.  I was expecting someone to use cut stripes of construction paper, but no one did.  Jack's flag incorporates bits of the flags from some of the several countries that maintain bases on Antarctica!  I thought that was pretty clever.  We were all a little surprised to find India on that list.  

And Eli's final version.  He printed the penguins and pasted them on.

Now we're looking forward to our LAST SCHEDULED WEEK OF SCHOOL.  

I'm ready.

Ready to be done.

Ready to see how many more countries they can locate on their post test maps than their pretest maps.  

Ready to close the book on spelling.  

Ready to cancel our monthly Aleks subscriptions.  

Ready to open the last Little Passports package.  

Ready to watch March of the Penguins and call it school.  

As much fun as this year has been,

and it really has been fun,

I'm ready for a little break from school.

Fortunately, I'm just as excited about next year.  

I hope to be able to order our curriculum for next year in July so I have plenty of time to create a better planner/record keeping solution for us.  I've always used a teacher plan book, but that wouldn't have worked this year, so I ended up just saving all my marked up photocopies in a folder, but I'd really like to make something a little more tailor made to our needs for next year.  I have a couple ideas, I just need the time to execute them.  I am hoping to spend some quality time at Staples concocting my masterpiece.  

In other news, we found The Dress for Annaliese's graduation yesterday.  Glad to have that settled, she graduates on Thursday!  

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Weekly Wrap Up, Australia Week 2

Our Little Passports treat was a fridge magnet featuring aboriginal artwork.

Now that we're at the end of the school year, it's such fun to look at the map and see it covered in flags.  (not all of the countries we studied had LP kits available)

Our Little Passports suitcase shows some of the fun places we've learned about.

And all that's left now is 2 weeks of Antarctica, and the "end of school year" festivities.  

Eli is working on his Marsupial report.  Those are koala pictures on the screen.

Brianna is doing artwork from a DVD series (review coming soon!).

Speaking of artwork, 

the kids painted coral reefs.  This is Eli's fish face.  

This has been an amazing school year for us.  I feel like we've all, myself definitely included, learned so much this year.  I am excited about next school year, but I'm also looking forward to the summer break that will go by Way Too Fast.  

Next year, we begin a chronological study of world history.  I can't wait!  Even though next school year will have some new challenges for us, I am so looking forward to getting my historical facts in order!  

After 5 years of private school, Josiah has decided to homeschool again next year.  

Josiah's spring choir performance was last week.

Any time you add or subtract people from a group, it changes the dynamic.  Adding both a high schooler and two toddlers should make for some interesting times!  This year, when all the school kids were at school, I had 3 students.  Next year, I will double that.  

Although I can't order any curriculum until after we get back from China, I've been looking at ideas and talking to other moms and planning what I'd like to use.  I'm hoping we have another incredible year next year.  

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Homeschool Weekly Wrap Up - Russia week 1

The last Japan activity we did was Haiku writing.  After that, we turned our attention to Russia!

We made Faberge eggs from our Little Passports packet

and added them to our binders.

Adding the Russian flag (adopted in 1991) to our passports.

The Little Passports "treat" this month was a sheet of temporary tattoos.  Eli chose the flag and Jack chose the bear.  Which led to me singing, Waltzing With Bears

Hannah, working on her homework.  

They've got her writing 3 sentences about a topic now.

Her sentences are... "original." 

We watched a documentary on Netflix called Rasputin:  The Mad Monk.  Note to self, you might want to preview the next documentary you show the kids!  Yikes.  It was, er, graphic about his personal life.  But we did catch a glimpse of St. Basil's cathedral in the footage, which was perfect because we watched it the same day Brianna built a model of  St. Basil's.

Doing a word search.  

We also watched a documentary about Russian painters, and are planning to view another about the Russian ballet.  

I got out some genealogy documents and was able to show the kids our German ancestors who immigrated from Odessa when Ukraine was a part of Russia.  I love that even as far back as Catherine the Great, our family has a history of adoption.  

Homeschool Weekly Wrap Up, India

Last week we started India.

This cute little tiger came in our Little Passports packet.

Everybody loves him.

Eli's got his passport, his map book, the Taj Mahal, and a Bengal tiger.

We were already familiar with naan, thanks to my friend Angela and Trader Joe's.  

So we had naan with dinner one night, and paratha with dinner another night.

They were yummy.

Eli and Brianna got creative.

They made Raja a coat 

and a habitat with food, tree, waterfall, and cave.

We learned about the Indian festival Raksha Bandhan, where girls tie a bracelet on their brother's wrist,

And boys promise to love, help, and protect their sisters.  

Waiting at evil Walmart for Hannah's glasses to be repaired.

Annaliese made gummy "bears" using play doh molds.

Our art project this week was clay boxes.

They were supposed to have "gemstones" pressed into them, but Some People tend to interpret directions rather loosely.  

Bri actually made a box with gems, but the pictures didn't turn out well.  

I found this among my pictures when I downloaded the camera card, lol.  Made me smile.

I'm wishing I had planned a wee bit better and been able to hit China this week while we're doing Lunar New Year activities around here.  But we have one more week of India before we start China NEXT week.  Good thing CNY is such a long holiday, right?  At least we'll be learning about China when we get to Lantern Festival.  I have something special planned for that!  

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