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Written by monthly contributing writer, Michele at Frugal Granola.

My children love it when I announce, “It’s project time!” (And I love giving them simple, supervised outlets for their creativity, instead of discovering they’ve emptied out all the soap in the bathroom or honey in the pantry…)

I keep a simple stash of art supplies; nothing too fancy or extensive. We regularly replace items as they get used up (such as crayons. glue, or paper), but most supplies (such as small bottles of paint or glitter) last quite awhile- as long as they’re safely stored away from little hands.

Your list could certainly be even shorter than mine, and you would still be well-equipped for some creative fun! These are just the items we’ve gathered over the years, often from thrift stores or gifts.

Our Creative Supply List:

• Crayons (including “chunky” ones for toddlers)
• A few small bottles of Acrylic Paint or Watercolor Paint (mostly primary colors)
• Watercolor and/or Colored Pencils
• Pens & Pencils (plus a sharpener and eraser)
• Paintbrushes
• Markers (we rarely use these, actually)
• Chalk (Try making your own with this Pavement Chalk recipe!)
• Paper (Doodle Paper, Colored Paper, and Watercolor Paper)
• Old Magazines (used for collages)
• Glitter
• Glue Sticks & Liquid Glue
• Child-Safe Scissors
• Beeswax
• Fabric Scraps & Yarn/Ribbon
• Felt
• Art Smocks or Aprons
• Grass Seed or Flower Seeds
• Rubber/Foam Stamps (Or, make your own stamps with potatoes, celery, broccoli, apples, etc.)
• Washable Placemats (homemade with paper collages covered in clear contact paper)
• Pantry Items: Natural Food Coloring, Arrowroot Powder or Cornstarch, Essential Oils, Salt, Cream of Tartar
• Outside Items (gathered by children as needed): Flowers, Leaves, Rocks, Acorns, Wood Pieces

Here are a few of our recent favorite projects:

Play Slime

Based on this “Clean” Play Slime Recipe, we mixed up a batch using arrowroot powder instead of cornstarch, since that is what I had on hand. My daughter wanted purple slime, so we mixed in some natural food coloring (reinforcing that “blue & red make purple”), and she also put in several drops of essential oil.

Homemade Recycled Crayons

You can see my post on these at Frugal Granola, where we gathered up all our random crayon pieces on a rainy day. They are the perfect size for little hands! We followed the instructions from Make & Takes.

Painted Rocks

My daughter loves gathering rocks from outside, and I gave her some acrylic paint to decorate a few. We also added a bit of glitter at the end, along with a few googly eyes & sequins (a gift from a librarian friend). I started just with primary color paints, and we practiced making secondary colors to decorate the rocks. She had so much fun making up names & characters for her rocks!

Some other versions of Rock Crafts:

• Hot Rocks + Crayons (a great summer activity!)
• Story Stones (inspired by Emily of Red Bird Crafts)
• Love Rocks
• Painted Garden Stones

Homemade Gluten-Free Playdough

We have our recipe, along with color/scent combination ideas at Frugal Granola. This is the most-requested project in our home!

Finger-Knitting

We were inspired by these lovely Finger Knitted Flowers.

As we get ready for the new school year to begin, I’ve been preparing a list of new creative projects, along with our school plans. I keep my ongoing inspiration links at Pinterest, where I can refer to them as I make my plans.

Some future project ideas on my list are:

• Hammered Flower & Leaf Prints
• Homemade Finger Paints
• Paper With Holes Free Play Art
• Moss Terrarium (similar, but without the morbid theme)

What are your children’s favorite creative activities?

With summer upon us and the quickly approaching arrival of our third child, I was trying to plan some fun simple activities that my preschool daughter could work on that wouldn’t require much time or energy on my part. I wanted something educational but different from the normal schooling routine. I wanted some activities that could be self-directed while mommy might be busy with a new little one. I came upon these few resources that I have been absolutely thrilled with. And did I mention my daughter loves as well?

Kumon Workbooks -  I recently stumbled upon this series of hands on workbooks, and my daughter has been making her way through the My First Book of Cutting workbook and absolutely loves the various cutting exercises. They are simple and yet have really strengthened her eye and hand coordination. They are an easy tool for basic childhood development while being very self-directed for the most part. These workbooks range in skills from cutting, drawing, mazes, tracing, pasting, to basic math and language skills, all for a 3-6 year old level. They even offer a First Steps series for as young as 2 year olds with basic cutting, pasting, and coloring practice. We plan to use these this fall with my toddler while sister is working on her own school, along with this cut little pair of first scissors. These workbooks could easily be used alone for a solid start on preschool.

Brain Quest -We started the Brain Quest preschool question pack and what a fun little hands on learning tool. Most of which were pretty easy for my four year old, but still offered fun review and helped solidify some concepts she is weaker in. It’s great for the car or just a simple self directed activity. With full cover pictures and self-checking ability, it has been lots of fun to do together or on her own. We look forward to picking up the Brain Quest Kindergarten as well!

Taro Gami Coloring books -These coloring books are pretty unique. Taro Gomi is a Japanese illustrator that inspires kids to color, draw, imagine and create from unfinished picture prompts. They are also huge, with each volume having somewhere around 400 pages. They inspire imagination in a fun way. Rather than having all the pictures ready to be drawn, the child is encouraged to finish the drawing on their own, such as draw the apples on this tree, and now draw you eating the apples, or draw clothes on the child, etc. These books are certainly suitable for older children as well and may be slightly advanced for a young child.

What Your Preschooler Needs to Know – This book is packed full of fun poems, short stories, classic read alouds, simple history and science stories. It has helped me learn how to dialog more effectively with my daughter through our reading experiences to increase comprehension, retention, and narration with lots of helpful teaching tips or question prompts at the side of the page. There is a thorough article at the end about reading aloud to your children with practical tips on making your read aloud time most effective. My little ones love all the sing-a-long poems with simple hand motions or dancing movements. Each day they pull out the book and asks me to read this or sing that. Lots of fun interaction together (with both toddlers and preschoolers)! You can also purchase activity guides that accompany this book.

Thanks to FBS Books for the sampling of some of these products!

What are your favorite early learning resources?

Photo credit

As we begin planning and preparing for the education of our children, my husband and I have been prayerfully considering and discussing why we would like to homeschool them. I was personally homeschooled through high school, while Aaron was homeschooled through junior high, and we both loved the experience. But I know that in order to persevere and be successful in it, we must have a mission and vision to keep us on track. My personal homeschooling experience was far from perfect, in fact there were many areas that were lacking, but overall, it was so influential in my life because Christ was the center of my education and we loved learning together. Please note my desire in sharing our motivation is in no way to condemn any of you who have chosen a different path for education. I know that God may have a different route for your family. I simply find it helpful to establish our foundation from the beginning in this manner. May it help encourage and inspire you in your pursuit of educating your children.

These are the five primary reasons we have decided to pursue this form of education:

1. In order to keep Christ the center in our home

We want the cornerstone of our children’s education to be centered around a Biblical worldview. We see great value in learning how to discuss the many worldviews of our culture all through the lens of the Word of God. We desire for the foundation of everything we learn – from geography to history – to be centered around God’s beautiful redemptive plan. Homeschooling gives us the freedom to design our curriculum around the core message of the gospel.

2. We want to be the primary influence in the lives of our children

Our primary responsibility is to train and disciple our children to love and serve the Lord all the days of their lives. I believe being their primary teacher is the best means for me to impart a love for Christ to our children and a love to serve and bless others with their lives. We are passionate about teaching our children as we sit down, as we rise up, and as we walk along the way (Deut. 6:7), and we believe homeschooling is an excellent fit in fulfilling this calling.

3. For the cultivation of strong family relationships

The beauty of homeschooling is learning together, of always being together and learning to love and work together in peaceful manners. It birthed over time beautiful friendships among my own siblings. I love spending time with my little ones just learning about the world together. It’s delightful and I cannot imagine exchanging it for anything. I want to walk hand in hand as we explore God’s creation, as we marvel at the plan of history throughout the ages, and as we glimpse the complexity of His design. I want to talk about it every step of the way.

4. To encourage a love for learning in our home

Another benefit we appreciate about homeschooling is the ability to design and organize our own curriculum focused on what each child desires to learn, and meet their own particular needs and learning styles, rather than forcing them to read a certain textbook or agenda. We call it delight-directed learning. Does your child love World War II? Why not package geography, history, and writing into one as you borrow books from the library on that topic? Our children will retain that which they enjoy. We want our children to love to learn, read, and study God’s world, and homeschooling is a great means of accomplishing that in numerous creative options. We can learn and explore the world around us together through everyday activities.

5. For the freedom it provides to focus on the Kingdom work

Lastly, we love the freedom that homeschooling provides to allow us to get up and go as needed. If we need to set aside the day to serve another family, take a day outing or field trip, or simply take a break, it does not jeopardize anything. We want our children to know first and foremost that walking in light of the Great Commission is our first priority as a family.

That being said, my goals are not that we would have the most smart or well-educated children on the earth, but rather that our children would first love the Lord, desire to serve Him, love to learn, respect and steward God’s creation, and learn to articulate their faith from a Biblical worldview. We will utilize homeschool co-ops in the future to glean further learning from other knowledgeable people, in addition to speech and debate groups so that we can think logically in understanding and relating to our culture. We will learn music skills so that we can lead others in worshiping our Creator.

Our goal is not to be overly protective of our children in anyway. We want to equip them effectively to be sent out to share the love of Christ with others. That is what this life is about. Education matters little if my children do not love the Lord.

Further Reading

The Benefits (and Disadvantages) of Homeschooling

What method of education have you chosen and why?

We are so excited to begin some more focused preschool activities with Karis this year. She loves her school time! My goals this year for my little preschooler is to read a lot of good solid literature together, memorize one Bible verse each week, learn our letters, and cultivate a love for learning and serving.

Literature

We have decided to use Sonlight for our curriculum base because I simply love the focus on a literature based education. Sonlight provided us with such a wonderful set of literature as we purchased the P 3/4 curriculum (many of the books in this set are available used through Amazon, which provided a significant savings).

This curriculum core is simply a collection of fabulous classic children’s literature that has stood the test of time. I love the literature based method of education because it focuses on just stirring up a love for reading and books, and what better way to learn about history, geography, writing, and so much more rather than just a textbook. The P 3/4 curriculum does not include any lesson plans or workbooks unlike the other Sonlight curriculum sets, but is basically just encouraging a lot of reading together, which is simple and fun, providing us with a solid base for her education. We spend 30 minutes every morning just reading these books together, over and over, and talking about the stories and concepts. The literature selection is awesome! Even if you don’t use the curriculum guide, you are getting a wealth of good stories. Both my children (2 & 4 years) absolutely love these books!

UPDATE: As of January 2011, we graduated up to the P4/5 curriculum and love it too! It is a great literature supplement to the letters curriculum that I share about below. The book titles help graduate my daughter up to reading longer stories with fewer pictures. We love the Developing the Early Learner workbooks that accompany this set, providing a lot of practice with pre-reading skills. My daughter loves any workbook practice, so they are a great addition to our collection.

Learn Your Letters, Learn to Serve

The second part of our preschool plan is utilizing Laura at Heavenly Homemaker’s newly launched preschool curriculum, Learn Your Letters, Learn to Serve. This 240+ kit includes thorough lesson plans, games, crafts, recipes, memory verses for each letter of the alphabet, Bible story suggestions, vocabulary stimulation and discussion, play, books to read and so much more…all while encouraging service to God!

I absolutely love Laura’s unique focus on teaching letters while creatively serving other people. As you learn each letter, you identify one person whose name begins with that letter, and you think of a creative gift to give them that also begins with that letter. Each letter you study includes suggestions for service, such as “Take a new Bible to B__________” on Bb week, “Make soup for someone who is sick on Ss week, and “Deliver flowers to F_______________” on Ff week.  Your child will make gifts or food, offer help and learn to think of others.  As a family you can delight in praying together about who you would like to serve and what form of service you would like to offer!

The lessons are not complicated but very simple and manageable, especially if you have multiple lessons, and a great option to supplement with any other activities you may have planned. I am eager to start working this in to our schedule as well and encouraging my little ones to delight in serving others in creative means! I also love how this course could be used easily for multiple age groups and is not limited to preschoolers alone. Check out a free sample lesson here!

As we learn our letters, we are utilizing The Letter Factory DVD, and Cuisenare Rods Alphabet Book with Cuisenare Rods for extra reinforcement and problem solving.

Character Building & Scripture Memory

Along with these resources, we are using Teach Them to Your Children: An Alphabet of Biblical Poems, Verses, and Stories by Sarah Wean, and My ABC Bible Verses by Susan Hunt for further Scripture memory inspiration around the alphabet along with quality character building stories. Our goal is to memorize one verse a week and study each letter for two weeks, thus memorizing two verses for each letter of the alphabet. Thus far, Karis has actually memorized four verses for letter A. We write it out on a dry-erase board and store in a visible place in our living room/dining room. We strive to read the verse several times a day, but mainly at means times. And of course she loves listening to Songs for Saplings: ABC CD, and God’s Word from A-Z by Abe & Liza Philips for verses set to music. These little preschoolers can really store up the Scriptures! I have been pleasantly surprised by the way she so sweetly articulates each verse we learn.

That’s our preschool plan this year along with lots of trips to the library and exploring nature together!

Because I love both Sonlight and Learn Your Letters, Learn to Serve, I have become an affiliate for both resources. Every purchase made through my links helps support our orphan home! Thanks!

Here’s a sweet video clip of Karis reading Go, Dog Go! by Dr. Seuss. She only heard it 5-6 times before she had the whole story down and could read it aloud to herself. I thought it was so cute and had to post it for your enjoyment! This book is one of her favorites and through it she has learned important concepts such as counting, colors, shapes, under and over, going around, cold and hot, etc. all centered around these funny dogs. Love it and highly recommend adding it to your library!