It was my turn to lead our Keepers At Home group this week and we had so much fun learning the handicraft of paper quilling!
Paper quilling is the art of creating designs from strips of coiled paper. There are quilling tools and quilling papers available, but we simply used materials I had around the house.
How To:
Using my paper cutter, I pre-cut strips of cardstock into 1/4″ wide strips.
I set out the following supplies:
Strips of paper
Quilling tools: pencils, screwdrivers, toothpicks, chopsticks (any skinny, round objects I could find) Try to offer varied widths for different coiling effects.
Glue (with toothpicks for “painting the glue” on the paper to seal the coils)
Sheets of cardstock to display the finished designs
The girls coiled the strips into various shapes depending on the designs they were creating. Some coils were tight, some were loose, some were shaped by pinching the coil, and some were only coiled on one end of the strip. Our techniques may not have been “proper”, but we had fun and created very pretty designs.
Aren’t they cute?
Feel free to link your own paper quilling projects in the comments. I can’t wait to see them!
Congratulations to Heidi and Michelle! They are the winners of any six NaturExplorers studies of their choice and have been contacted via email already.
Thank you to all who commented on the 10 Days of Nature Study posts! You might like to know that my Facebook friends are currently enjoying a coupon code to purchase top seller Incredible Creeks for only $6.00!! (And I’ll probably be offering several other coupon codes over the next couple of weeks!)
Welcome to my 10 Days Series on the topic of nature study! Each of the ten days brings you a creative nature walk idea and a fun follow-up activity to spark your enthusiasm for nature study today!
Yesterday, you enjoyed learning a little about erosion at the creek. But, you don’t need a creek to find signs of erosion because they can be found just about anywhere in nature. Because erosion can be caused by any type of running water (creeks, rivers, rain, etc), ice, wind and even the sun, it isn’t hard to find things that have been affected by it.
You only need a small area to observe today, say the size of a back yard or slightly larger. You’ll be looking for any and all signs of erosion in the area. Be sure to observe all types of nature and things made with natural materials – the ground, rocks, bricks, trees, concrete, asphalt…
Take with you a piece of graph paper on a clipboard and a pencil. Your task is to walk around the space drawing a to-scale map of all the signs of erosion you can find. Older children will want to add length, width and depth measurements to the map (for the activity to follow.)
Follow-up Activity:
Make a physical salt dough map using your to-scale map as a guide. This means you will create a 3-D representation from dough that will look like a model of the area you observed on your erosion walk. Once dry, you can paint the map, gluing fun features like soil and pebbles to make the map look more realistic.
Salt-Dough Map Recipe
Mix equal parts of flour and salt. Add just enough water to make the dough feel like play dough. Mold it to your liking using a sturdy piece of cardboard as your base. Let it dry in the sun for several hours (or even a couple of days) until it feels hard on the outside.
{Not a map of erosion, but the only salt-dough picture I could locate in my files. I’ve added it to help give you an idea of a finished salt dough map.}
Read a Book of Two If You Like:
Be watchful. Some of these books promote millions of years.
Today’s erosion activities are just teeny-tiny sampling of similar ideas suggested in the NaturExplorersEverchanging Erosion study!
Be sure to visit the other fantastic bloggers taking part in this season’s 10 Days Series!
The 10 Days Series is organized by iHomeschool Network, a collaboration of outstanding homeschool bloggers who connect with each other and with family-friendly companies in mutually beneficial projects. Visit us on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. And of course, click the image above to visit all the 10 Days posts from these homeschool moms of the iHomeschool Network.
Welcome to my 10 Days Series on the topic of nature study! Each of the ten days brings you a creative nature walk idea and a fun follow-up activity to spark your enthusiasm for nature study today!
The running water of a creek is a powerful force of erosion. You can notice this in the deep ruts of a creek bed, exposed roots of trees near the edge of a creek, and even as you observe rocks resting in a creek. Today, you’re going to search a creek for rocks and notice signs of water erosion.
Over time, the constant rushing water of a creek wears down, and sometimes breaks apart, large rocks. Fast currents can actually pick up smaller rocks and deposit them elsewhere. As you walk, you’ll be looking for several signs to show erosion is taking place:
Large, rough rocks may have smoothed sections where water is constantly running over them.
Larger rocks may have indentations, or even holes through them, where water drips or falls constantly.
Smaller rocks may be smooth and rounded from being knocked around often.
Smaller rocks may be gathered in what seem like piles on the creek bed. In this case, there’s often a bend in the creek where the rushing water can no longer push the rocks forward.
Leave the nature notebooks at home today. Simply walk near (or in) a creek and talk about erosion. You might collect several rock samples which show various stages of erosion to display at home.
Follow-up Activity:
The following experiment will help you see how the flowing water of a creek can turn rough rocks into smooth pebbles.
Place one piece of Lifesaver candy into an empty jar. This represents a rock sitting near a stream, but not in the water.
Place a second Lifesaver into a jar that contains ½ cup of still water. This represents a rock that is in a still body of water like a pond.
Place a third Lifesaver into a jar that contains ½ cup of water. Cover this jar and shake it for 3-5 minutes. This represents a rock that is in a moving body of water like a creek. When it bounces against the jar, it’s like the rock in the stream hitting other rocks.
After 3-5 minutes, observe all three Lifesavers.
The first piece of candy didn’t change because there was little to no weathering that would cause erosion. The second piece of candy changed slightly because it was being weathered/eroded by the still water, but ever-so-slowly. And the third piece of candy changed drastically because it was under constant active weathering, causing a great deal of erosion. Relate this to a real rock being changed to a pebble.
Read a Book or Two If You Like:
Today’s creek activities are only a teeny-tiny sampling of similar ideas suggested in the NaturExplorersIncredible Creeks study!
Be sure to visit the other fantastic bloggers taking part in this season’s 10 Days Series!
The 10 Days Series is organized by iHomeschool Network, a collaboration of outstanding homeschool bloggers who connect with each other and with family-friendly companies in mutually beneficial projects. Visit us on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. And of course, click the image above to visit all the 10 Days posts from these homeschool moms of the iHomeschool Network.
Welcome to my 10 Days Series on the topic of nature study! Each of the ten days brings you a creative nature walk idea and a fun follow-up activity to spark your enthusiasm for nature study today!
Today’s tree focus will be on leaves. Each leaf (on any plant, not just trees) is like a wonderful little factory! With the help of the sun, leaves change water and nutrients drawn up from the ground into life-giving sap that’s delivered to the tree as food. In the process, we are blessed with the by-product, or waste, called oxygen. If you would like to know more about this process of photosynthesis, you might enjoy viewing this YouTube video. It’s cartoon-like, but quite in-depth and takes less than five minutes.
To begin learning about leaves’ visible parts during your nature walk today, sketch or make a rubbing of several leaves in a nature journal. Label the parts using the definitions below.
Blade – this is the broad, flat part
Midrib – this is the main vein going up the middle of the leaf
Veins – these are the smaller veins going from the midrib to the edge
Margin – otherwise known as the edge of the leaf
Stem – this connects the leaf to the branch of the tree
Petiole – this connects the stem to the leaf (some leaves do not have this)
Make comparisons of the parts from leaf to leaf.
Follow-up Activity:
Complete the following transpiration experiments and make drawings and/or notes in your nature journal. Transpiration is the process by which plants lose water through their leaves. You can almost compare it to sweating in humans.
1. To observe transpiration in action, place a plastic bag over a few leaves on a tree in your yard. Secure the bag tightly with a rubber band. After a day or two, observe the bag. You should see water droplets. These are the result of the leaves transpiring, the water evaporating, and then condensing again on the inside surface of the bag.
2. Photosynthesis cannot occur if water and other gases can’t escape through the leaves. Tiny holes, or pores, called stomata are the places from which the water and gases escape. You can see these pores by painting the underside of a leaf with six coats of clear nail polish. After the polish dries, peel it off and look at it under a microscope.
3. See what happens when the stomata aren’t able to transpire. Coat the underside of a few leaves with a thick layer of petroleum jelly. Observe the leaves each day for several days. Can you explain the results?
Read a Book or Two If You Like:
Today’s nature study ideas are just a small sampling of similar deciduous tree suggestions in the NaturExplorers Delightful Deciduous Trees study!
Be sure to visit the other fantastic bloggers taking part in this season’s 10 Days Series!
The 10 Days Series is organized by iHomeschool Network, a collaboration of outstanding homeschool bloggers who connect with each other and with family-friendly companies in mutually beneficial projects. Visit us on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. And of course, click the image above to visit all the 10 Days posts from these homeschool moms of the iHomeschool Network.
You never know what I might be writing about - homeschool plans, field trips, projects, family life, and so much more. I hope you'll consider using the subscribe button at the top of my blog to keep up with all the happenings at Westward Academy. And, by the way, I love comments!
