An Easy DIY for Christmas

An Easy DIY for Christmas

by | Dec 20, 2022 | Geography, Geography Activities, Geography DIY, Homeschool, Science DIY

This year for Christmas I wanted to try making a number of my children’s gifts myself. I have been admiring the cosmic address activity made by Waseca for a very long time and that became one of my main DIY goals this holiday season. I got some wooden nesting blocks off of my local buy nothing group and set to work. These particular blocks were from a cartoon Melissa and Doug set. I sanded off the original images ( the children actually unknowingly helped with his step). After a few layers of paint they were ready for me to start working on our cosmic address. I only had eight blocks to work with so I had to alter it somewhat ending the address with our house address. I painted these blocks by hand but I think it would look gorgeous with print outs of real maps modge podged onto the blocks. I am still considering doing this for the back of the blocks, but I am running out of time until Christmas! It would also be great to make paper or felt cut outs that symbolize each stage of the address and glue them onto the blocks.

This is it for this post, I just wanted to share that sometimes you can make your own materials without spending a dime and often children love these materials more than store bought toys and are even more careful in their use! I will update sometime in the new year to show the different ways my children have found to use these blocks and some of the activities I have in mind for them as well. Merry Christmas!

Animal Play

Animal Play

by | Mar 23, 2022 | Geography, Geography Activities, Geography DIY, Homeschool

I noticed recently that many of our geography materials were not seeing much use. Mr. Man has a very solid understanding of the continents and oceans but is still very overwhelmed by work about countries. Both kids are showing a lot of interest in animals recently and have been taking the animal figures out of the continent boxes to play with around the school room. I decided to pick up a few hard plastic pencil cases from a craft store and create a habitat play box for a couple of the continents to see if it would spark any interest. I started with Europe and Antarctica and used red and white boxes to match the geography color coding that is found throughout our Geography work. I used hot glue, felt, and fake grass for the Europe box. I added in a few animals that you would find in Europe (these figures have matching information cards in the continent boxes). For my Antarctica habitat box I used hot glue, felt and some glass beads I found at the dollar store that I thought would be a great representation of ice. Put animal figures that could be found in Antarctica and placed both boxes on the the geography shelf. Little Miss found the material first and played with them for quite a while. She has been really enjoying small object play recently and these mini habitats with tiny figures seemed to really appeal to her. Mr. Man was very excited to see them and he did something that I found really interesting. We keep a world map tapestry on the floor in our school room that is used for a number of activities, Mr. Man placed the Europe Habitat box on Europe on the tapestry while he played. He did the same with the Antarctica box. He has asked if I can make the rest of the continent boxes for him as well. I am also considering making more than one for a few continents that have a wide array of habitats within them. This has been a very cheap project and each box took around ten minutes to assemble. I am also liking how easy it is to carry them along in the car or diaper bag in case my kids need something to do while we are on the go. I will be updating this post as I continue to make more boxes!

Globe DIY

Globe DIY

by | Jan 31, 2022 | Geography, Geography Activities, Geography DIY

DIY Materials are extremely cost effective. I wanted my children to have access to a globe that reflected the same color coding as our other Geography materials, and I wanted it to have the texture of a land and water globe that you would find in a Montessori Casa classroom. I noticed a small globe at my local dollar store and thought I would see if I could work some DIY magic on it. I used a little paint to cover the continents and color code them, and then covered the land masses in a layer of glitter to provide texture. This project cost me $4 and my children love it! There are so many activities you can do with a globe like this one, and I am thrilled to have it in my inventory!