Disney School Day 5 - Dumbo

So today we focused our attention onto the circus!  Yes, it was Dumbo Day here at our house.  I think the kids had a lot of fun with this one.

We started as usual with math sheets from school.  There are so many fun activities that you can come up with though. I would definitely suggest addition problems with jugglers, division with magicians, and any number of counting exercises with animals and acts.

Our video for today was a documentary of the circus.  I wanted to watch something on the history of the circus, but I wasn't having much luck on Youtube.  The documentary we watched was okay, but nothing really great, so I'm not going to leave a link today.  I think you'd be better off just watching videos of the circus.  The kids would like it much more. 

We were all ready to do something fun, so we changed to science.  Of course, with a circus theme, we tested the science behind tight rope walkers in this fun center of gravity experiment. 

https://www.rookieparenting.com/can-you-balance-a-craft-stick-on-a-chopstick-science-experiment/

It really does work well.  The kids were very quick to understand why the craft stick was able to balance after the weights were attached.  We didn't get a chance to follow it up, but if you have the means, have your kids try to walk across a board or line with weights in each hand and see if they can feel the difference. 

Our craft today was to make a circus car.  I got the idea from this site.

https://www.firstpalette.com/craft/circus-train.html

Both cars came out really cute.  The kids had a great time decorating their cars and their animals.

We took a break for lunch and then watched the movie.  We followed this up with some spelling and English pages from our workbooks.

Our last activity was creative writing.  Today's prompt was, "Describe what act you would perform in the circus, and explain why you would want to do that act."  My son came up with walking a tightrope over top a cage of lions.  My daughter wanted to do a dolphin act.  I think creative writing has become my favorite activity.  I love reading what they think. 

Well, this sums up our Dumbo day!  I hope you had fun following along.  Tune in tomorrow as we dive into the world of Cinderella.

Disney School Day 4 - Fantasia

So today was our fourth day of Disney School.  We focused today on Fantasia.  I personally love this movie, but I have to mention a few things before I recommend it to all of you.  First and most importantly, this is an art film.  It was meant for a more adult audience.  That being said, there are several places where female nudity is on display.  The fairies in the nutcracker suite are all without clothes.  For the most part, it isn't that noticeable, but it is there.  Secondly, the girl centaurs in the pastoral symphony are seen topless while they are getting ready.  The cherubs are also naked, but they don't really have genitalia, just bare bottoms. The last segment has demons dancing at the top of Bald Mountain, and Chernabog, the main demon, conjour nude women from the flames and they dance for him.  Also, it is all classical music and some children might be bored.  If these sound like worrisome issues for you, feel free to skip the movie. You can always do our activities and just claim it's a music day.  Or, just watch the sorcerer's apprentice segment.  It's the best one anyway.  ;)

We started our day as usual with math sheets.  For anyone who is interested, this is a perfect time to introduce music notes into your math.  You can teach your kids the difference between whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes and get them to do math problems with them.

Next was our usual social studies video.  Today I had them watch a video on the worlds best opera houses, since that's where many of the songs from fantasia were originally performed. We also watched a tour of the Paris opera house since my daughter loves Phantom of the Opera.

World's best opera houses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poCRVNEhJ7E

Paris Opera House:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2hSAZIDwbE

My daughter really wanted to watch the movie, since it is one of her favorites.  So we changed the order of our activities and watched the movie.

We decided to do our science experiment next.  We talked about sound waves and how they traveled.  To illustrate this, we made telephones.  All I did was grab two styrofoam cups and some natural twine.  I poked a hole in each of the cups and fed the twine through, then tied a knot.   Stretch the cord tight and try talking.  The tighter the cord, the easier it is to hear the other person.

After lunch, the kids did their spelling from school, then we started our writing assignment.  Today, I asked them to sit and listen to Claire de Lune.  As they were listening to it, I asked them to think of a story that would go along with the music.  I had each of them write their story for me.  When they had finished, I gave them some watercolors and explained that when they made fantasia, each segment started with concept sketches that would give the overall mood and color schemes of the piece.  I asked them to create a concept painting for their story.  Both of them had a great time with this project.

Finally we read the original poem of the sorcerer's apprentice.  I found it online translated from the original German.  You can find the poem here.

https://www.poemofquotes.com/johannwolfganggoethe/the-sorcerers-apprentice.php

I hope you enjoyed this segment of Disney School.  Tomorrow we will be focusing on Dumbo.  Have a great day!

Disney School Day 3 - Bambi

Hi everyone!! Happy Monday.  Today our little Disney school studied aspects of Bambi.

We started our day as we usually do with breakfast and math sheets from school.  There are a lot of possibilities for counting with leaves, animals, and other natural elements.

We followed this up with our social studies video.  Today we took a look at the national forests.  We watched this video of the top 25 national parks.  The kids were asked to name which park they would like to visit and why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTBmv-Gzf2w

So after the video, the kids needed something a little more active, so we tried our science experiment.  One of my favorite parts of the bambi movie was the drip drip drop little April showers song, so we learned about rain.  Ours didn't turn out exactly like it was supposed to, but eventually the colors started to rain down.  The kids fully understood how the water loads up the clouds until they were too heavy and made rain.  Here is the website to our experiment.

https://www.aliceandlois.com/kids-cloud-science-project/

We finished our morning work with spelling and English with papers from school.  We are starting to run low on them, so I'll have to start finding age appropriate activities for these as well.

We took a break for recess and lunch, then watched Bambi.  It really is a cute movie, even if it has its intense moments.  My son loves the baby animals.

We tried writing next.  I told them that through the whole movie, Bambi had two best friends who did everything with him.  I then asked them to write about their two best friends.  I wanted to know who they were and why they were friends.  I also asked my daughter if she thought her friendships would last and why.

Finally we made deer masks for our crafts.  I decided just to make them out of cardstock since the kids probably wouldn't be interested in them after today.  If you think your kids would want to keep using their masks for more than a week, I suggest making them out of foam or felt.  This is the original post I got the idea from.  I found the pattern when I did a google search for bambi masks.  I tried to find the direct link, but it looks like the webpage no longer exists, and I don't want to post an image that isn't mine, so to find the template, do a search for bambi masks.  look in the images tab and you will find the template.

https://family.disney.com/craft/diy-bambi-and-thumper-masks/

I hope you guys enjoy these ideas for your Bambi day.  Tomorrow we will be working on Fantasia projects.  See you then.

Disney School - Pinocchio

It is day 3 of our home school and day 2 of our Disney school.  Today we focused on the movie Pinocchio.  I will admit, this is not one of my favorite movies.  When I was little I couldn't understand why the boys were so naughty, and I was terrified of the whale.  But it did offer some good inspiration for school today.

We started, as usual, with math sheets from school.  If you are looking for inspiration that is more on theme, maybe make some word problems with how many fish monstro will eat, how many of Gipetto's clocks are working or not working, or how many boys were turned into donkeys.

We then watched videos about Italy.  I will be honest, the history ones we watched were a little boring.  I finished it up with a Ultra HD tour of Florence.

Animated history of Italy part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y16QLJOVP6s

Tour of Florence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfW-Tn231Sk

Next we moved to science.  I took my inspiration off of Monstro the whale.  We did this whale blubber experiment to show how animals can keep warm even in freezing water.

https://sciencekiddo.com/how-arctic-animals-stay-warm/

I thought that I had some crisco at home, however I was mistaken.  Instead we used some play-doh.  It worked pretty well, except my daughter's nails kept ripping a hole in her play-doh.  My son's however, worked perfectly.  He went from holding his finger in the water for 18 seconds to holding it in the water for over a minute.

My daughter really wanted to work on our craft next, so instead of spelling we did art.  Of course we made marionettes.

https://www.doodlecraftblog.com/2013/04/easy-silly-bird-marionette-diy-tutorial.html

My daughter chose a pink body and head with white feet.








My son went with all yellow. 

This was a fun craft, even though there was a lot they couldn't do in terms of the gluing.   But once they were done, the kids loved playing with them.

By this time we all needed a break, so they had recess in the basement, followed by lunch.  We started watching the movie Pinocchio on Disney +.

After lunch, the kids did their assigned spelling and English work.  My daughter is able to do her work on the computer, and my son enjoys the cutting and pasting project he got from school.

Writing was next.  My son was asked if he could have an animal conscience, what would his be and why.  He chose a dragon because it could protect him and they could play together.  My daughter was given the choice between this assignment or writing a short puppet show.  She chose a puppet show and wrote a fun show involving frogs and candy.   We finished the day by reading a bit of the original Pinocchio story.

I hope you enjoyed this installment of our Disney School. We will be taking the weekend off, but will start back up with Bambi on Monday.  Thank you for following along!

Disney School - Snow White

So just like everyone else, my kids are home for the next few weeks.  We are huge Disney fans, so we've decided to go to Disney school.  What does this mean, you may ask?  Well, each day, or activities are based on a different Disney movie.  Today was day 1, so we are doing Snow White.

We started our day with math.  The kids already have math sheets that the school sent home, so I have them do one a day.  If you are looking for ideas, do some counting with apples, dwarves, diamond shapes, basically anything that has a snow white vibe.  My daughter is currently working on units of measure, so we could have done some interesting conversions of weight for the jewels, or distances to get to the mine.

We followed this up by watching a few videos on YouTube about the black forest.  We enjoyed this one that follows a family around the black forest area.  It doesn't cover the importance of the fairy tales, but it still made my kids want to visit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5HE94YtjBU

Next was our craft time.  We made caramel apples in honor of the poisoned apples of the evil queen.  We melted caramels on the stove.  I removed the stems and put a stick in each apple.  The kids then rolled the apples around in the caramel.  We tried adding chocolate, but it didn't work that well.  Finally the kids added M&Ms to the outsides.  We let them cool and then ate them for our lunch dessert.  They may not have been very pretty, but they were very yummy.

We went back to school sanctioned work and had the kids do their assigned English and spelling work.

We then took our recess and lunch break.  The kids got to eat their apples.  As I said, they were very yummy. During lunch we watched the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.  We've seen it a ton of times, but since we were dedicating the day to it, I thought it was important to watch the movie.

Science was next on our list. I took inspiration off of the queen making her poison.  We followed this web page to make our own baking soda potions. My son really liked this one.

https://www.messylittlemonster.com/2018/09/baking-soda-magic-potion-science-experiment-kids.html

Next was creative writing.  This is one of my favorite lessons.  My children are in kindergarten and fourth grade, so they each have different needs.  For my son, I had him write about his favorite dwarf, and what his favorite things were.  My daughter got the harder, but more fun assignment of writing the story from the evil queen's point of view.

Our last activity of the day was reading.  We read the original Brothers Grimm version of Snow White.  It's a little darker than the cartoon, but I honestly believe the kids need to see where the movies originated.

Overall, the day went pretty well.  I am planning on doing a movie a day as long as the kids are in lock down.  Feel free to follow along on our adventures and hopefully get inspired for your own "Disney school."

First Week of School

So this week, both of my darling children went off to school.  Yes, my youngest started kindergarten this week.  As a Mom, I wanted to take my darling child to class the first day.  Of course, my child decided to ride the bus with his sister.  I tried to be a supportive mom and allowed him this new level of independence, but I got to tell you, I was dying inside. Not only did I send my youngest to Kindergarten, I sent him on a bus! 

After a few little tears, I went home.  I had decided to get my house in order.  For the last 10 years, it had gotten wildly out of control, and I gladly allowed the chaos to take over.  NO MORE!  I was going to tackle the clutter and the dust.  I had already done a decent job cleaning up the main areas of the living room and the kitchen, but I had a few areas that were still disasters. 

Of course, as soon as I came into the house, planning on tackling the beast areas, my pets realized the kids were no longer in the house and demanded attention.  My dog climbed into my lap and chose to camp out for a while.  If I stopped rubbing his ears, he would pick up his head and look at me as if to say, hey, you aren't done yet.  He finally had enough after about 10 minutes and moved over so he could take a real nap.  As soon as he left, one of the cats decided it was his turn.  He first climbed in my lap, then decided that nuzzling my leg was better.  He clamped one leg on the top of my leg and another around the bottom and hugged me for probably another 15 minutes.  Definitely not how I planned to start my day, but not the worst way either. 

So I finally have satisfied pets, and can continue to clean.  My family has acquired many buckets over the years.  Most of them have accumulated in one area, and almost all of them have small toys in them.  I had no less than 10 buckets filled with stuff that needed to be put away on top of any other clutter and junk that gathered around them.  Most people would ask, why do I have so much stuff?  I asked myself, why do we have this many buckets?  After contemplating the bucket takeover, I started clearing the entire place out.  I planned to vacuum the space, however as soon as I turned my back a cat had settled in the new, fun spot and fell asleep. 

So since I couldn't vacuum, I decided to put all the junk away, bucket by bucket. I completed this daunting task in way more time than I had planned.  Then I threw out all the buckets that were broken or missing handles.  This ended up being 2 regular buckets and 5 Halloween pumpkin buckets .  Why do I keep these things?  I really don't know.  I still have a pumpkin bucket running around, and about 6 more stacked neatly in an out-of-the-way location.  To finish off, I scared away the cat and vacuumed.  I felt a huge sense of accomplishment.  One beast down. 

The kids came home that night, and they had a great time.  Everyone was happy to be back at school, and to be honest, I think we are all better for having some time away from each other.  It makes our time together so much more fulfilling.  We'll see how next week goes!

Enchanted creatures birthday party

My daughter just turned 9. Of course she wanted a unique theme. She chose enchanted creatures so she could have unicorns, dragons, mermaids, and fairies.  Needless to say, you can't find all these at party city.

I started with the invitation. I recently got a new tablet with the airflow app, and I love it. I was able to draw up the invitation, then dropped it into photoshop to add the text.

Then it was time to decide on decorations. We decided that each area of the house would represent a different creature. Our living room was for unicorns, our kitchen was the fairy forest, the outside was a mermaid grotto, and her room would be for dragons.

Unfortunately I ran out of time to do all that I wanted. I made a simple forest background for the cake table and had unicorn balloons in front. We hung unicorn dangles in the hallway. I would have liked to have done some other unicorns in the windows but I ran out of time. We also got the giant unicorn balloon from party city. The kids loved it.



The fairy table turned out great. I made a fairy house for the kitchen table centerpiece.  I started with a milk carton and cut it the way I wanted. Next I hot glued aluminum foil to the milk carton, and once it looked the way I wanted,  I covered it in paperclay. I let it dry then painted it. I also made a bendy doll fairy.

Our kitchen table sits in a bay window. I covered the edges in crumpled brown paper to look like trees, and added green tablecloths to the top for the leaves. I used my cricut to cut out butterflies that spelled out happy birthday. I laminated them and hung them under the trees with fishing line.

The other two areas also suffered from too many ideas and not enough time. We did hang clear balloons to resemble bubbles, but it got so hot we didn't go out there much. I also wanted a beware of dragon on my daughter's door, but ran out of time.

The girls invited to the party each chose a creature to be. Once they arrived, they got accessories that helped them get into character. The unicorns got horn headbands, the fairies got wings, and the mermaids got sea shell headbands (they wore their own tails from target.)  No one wanted to be a dragon.


Our first activity was to use "mermaid waters" to make shirts. For each child I had cut a silhouette of their creature out of freezer paper and ironed it onto a plain white shirt. Then we mixed the tie die colors and put them in spray bottles. I bought a kit with blue, pink, teal, purple, and black. The girls then squirted the colors onto their shirts. There was a little color bleeding, but overall they really came out great.

Next we came in and got our faces painted, then made unicorn dreamcatchers. I bought 5 inch hoops and wrapped them in white cord. I cut a large length of rainbow cord and taught the girls how to weave a dreamcatcher. Finally we added touches such as the tail, horns, and ears.

Our final activity was a dragon egg pinata. It was made by paper macheing a 12 inch balloon then painting it with metallic paint. The gift bags contained a unicorn horn lollipop and a rock candy lollipop.  Then they had all their candy from the pinata and their crafts.

The party was a lot of fun, and everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves. This week I get back to work on some murals and I'll be starting Halloween preparations. See ya soon.