Skip to main content

History in the Making

DSC01043I am quickly adding one more “must have” to my bottomless homeschool supplies list, which already includes glue sticks, butterfly paper fasteners (I call them brads, but my sister Sara says nobody else does), whiteboard markers… and now, CLAY.  (seriously, gift certificates to Staples or Michael’s are probably a great gift item at any time of year!!!)

It seems that there is no end to things we can do or make or learn with clay.  The kids love it, too.  Way more than I do, because it dries on your fingers and makes them all stiff and DRY.  Ugh.  I just touch it as little as possible (I discovered we could cover the layer of clay with plastic wrap while rolling it out!).

They used to have clay at Dollarama – just a blob of plain natural clay for $1, which is all I figure it’s worth.  But I bought the last two packs of it I found and they seem to have replaced it with a weird rubbery plastic thing that comes in a million bright colours… except CLAY-coloured, of course.  It doesn’t dry hard, either; after a few days, it sort of turns into an eraser.  Yuck.

imageAnyway, here are some bricks.  They look more like Chiclets; they are not very uniform bricks.  This is a Story of the World Activity Book project to go along with the Indus Valley civilizations (Harappan cities, including Mohenjo-Daro).  The second part of the project is to build houses, wells, gates etc with the bricks and maybe glue them together into some kind of structure.

I think this post is here more to prove that we’re still doing history than that we’re doing it WELL or anything like studiously.  However, with Yom Kippur and Sukkos almost upon us, it may be a couple of weeks before we can continue in the book.

(here’s what one better homeschool family than ours did with the same project)

Comments

  1. I call "butterfly paper fasteners" brads, too. And so does a whole community of scrapbooking enthusiasts, as far as I can tell.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My older boys (7 and 4.5) LOVE clay, too. We make playdough to use, especially for my 2 year old, but clay that dries hard is always a big hit. The lightweight crayola "clay" is fun to play with, but doesn't fully harden. Don't make sukkah decorations with it because it will melt and drip garish colors all over everything if it rains. ;)

    And by the way, I call them brads, too!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ha! See??? I *knew* I didn't make it up. She got so peeved, I figured I was just hallucinating the name. :-o

    ReplyDelete
  4. I call them brads too, I didn't know they had another name :)]
    We haven't done clay in a very LONG time.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

It's Heart Month: 3 days left to save lives!

Dear Friends & Family: Hi, everybody! Sorry I can’t stop by in person... you're a bit out of my area.  :-) We’re out walking up and down on our street on this beautiful afternoon to raise money for Heart & Stroke.  This cause is important to me (I won't say it's close to my heart , because that would be tacky!).  I hope you'll join me by donating online. Growing up, I watched as every single one of my grandparents' lives were shortened by heart disease and strokes, and my father had a defibrillator that saved his life on more than one occasion.  Heart disease and stroke kill 1 in 3 Canadians and are the #1 killer of women. Please click this link to be redirected to my main page at the Heart & Stroke website: http://tinyurl.com/AtlasHeart Thus ends my personal appeal.  Official information follows.  :-))) ----- Heart disease and stroke is the #1 killer of women - taking more women's lives than all forms of cancer combined. But no one is immune. Th