What's an Adventure Box? (my first vlog post)

Saturday I spoke at the LEAH Convention (Loving Education at Home) in Rochester, NY on the topic of Adventure Boxes. I had so many requests to share the information here that I thought I would go ahead and try out a vlog post. This one is about 14 minutes, but in it I explain what an Adventure Box is, the benefits of planning an adventure with your kids, some ideas for adventures, and fun ways to use them. I hope you enjoy it!



Feel free to leave a comment and ask a question or give me some feedback...would you like to see more vlog posts? It would be fun to share more about how we use some of our curriculum in this format. Let me know if you think it would be valuable to you. Thanks!

Journal the Adventure

My new post is up over at Heart of the Matter this morning...It's called Journaling the Adventure and it's about how each of my kids and I are embarking on a journey together (each child has his/her own adventure). I'll be blogging here about our progress with more details on the adventures each child has chosen. Read below for an introduction to our project.


Recently, as I was planning some school time with my daughter, I decided it would be fun to bring back The Year of the Dollhouse. Perhaps some of you know about my blogging friend Lynn and her idea to play and make a homemade dollhouse with her daughter everyday for a year a few years ago now. My daughter was 7 then and we did make some renovations to her house and did some playing, but it faded away. As I thought about what would make this school year special, I asked her if she thought doing another Year of the Dollhouse might sound fun. Now that she’s 10 my plan is to teach some home making skills through our creating and playing at the dollhouse. I pulled out a journal and began some dialogue with her. The journal is for us to plan and talk about our activities with the dollhouse and she loves it. Grammar correction is off limits in our journal allowing her to be free to communicate with me without a critique. Read more...

Little House

This post begins a series of posts on what themes you can use for the Adventure Box. You can find more ideas in the side bar category Adventure Box Themes. I hope this proves helpful to you!

What little girl doesn't like Little House? The stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder make a wonderful Summer Adventure! We use these for regular school units as well. You can see our first three units in the left hand side bar close to the bottom. Our next study will be On the Banks of Plum Creek. Below are some resources you can use to have fun with the books. There are no shortages of Little House ideas that is for sure. This is a fabulous read aloud series that will have you and your kids laughing. Dan and I enjoy it because kids haven't changed all that much through the years and we can see a lot of this happening in our own kids or in what we did as kids! And just in case you are wondering...boys love little house just as much as girls. Farmer Boy is a favorite here, but there is plenty of action in the other titles as well.

This is a unit study written based on the Little House series. Worth it as a resource to have on your shelf- The Prairie Primer.

Fun Book with ideas for making pioneer crafts

Of course you have to include all the food! We had a great time making recipes from the World of Little House too...a lot of work with molasses. I'm just sayin'.

Extra source for learning about Laura and her family

When we had our Pioneer Crafts class at co-op it was fun to listen to music as we worked.

Information about each place the Ingalls family lived as well as Laura and Almonzo once they were married. There are some really nice pictures in here.

Paper Dolls for playing out the Big Woods story

This guide book shows each Little House today and how and when to visit- basically a tour guide book. We have yet to make up to Malone, NY where Farmer Boy takes place. Soon....

There are picture book versions of chapters out of Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, and Farmer Boy. Our kids really enjoy these even still.

If your kids really enjoy this series, they might enjoy the stories about Rose- Laura's daughter and the stories about her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother (Caroline, Charlotte, and Martha). We are collectors and enjoy all the stories.

Camp Little Guys- Day 6

Yesterday was terribly hot and humid. Yuck! Before noon we had a big storm come through so we holed up in the learning area to have some gluing fun. I had mentioned to J3 the night before that we could do some Jesse Bear gluing. He was excited! Day 6 also included a trip to the grocery store, a stop at Barnes and Noble to pick up our very own copy of Night of the Moonjellies, and a stop at Office Depot for .01 folders.

The start of the Jesse Bear Lapbook- these items are from Homeschool Share. He did a good job coloring Jesse Bear's shirt and pants and cooperating on the correct colors!

The front page

He made a B book and we talked about all the things pictured that begin with B. When he showed Dan he told him all the words below while he pointed to each picture. Nicely done J3! See the green pants? He cut those himself and told me they were Jesse Bear's pants. Conveniently, they are made from a post it note.

Inside the two books- this time when he colored he was all about the orange

We took out the birthday box of fun and he had a grand time

J3 also requested frogs and the balance

I-6 wanted to make a Batman lapbook

Batman's Reading Quest

Adventure Box time- Batman was informed that The Riddler had left words all over Gotham City with a challenge to Batman!

The Challenge- Batman must locate all the words and correctly read them aloud to Commisioner Gorden or ELSE!

Batman is expecting another challenge tomorrow which will include the words without RME visual cues and eventually sentences. The commissioner plans to surprise Batman at any point with a signal in the sky! Words must be read Batman! Please help us!


Batman finds his words

He reads them to the commissioner!

Disaster was averted! Batman remembers most of his words the first time through!! Great job Batman! Gotham City thanks you!!

Adventure Box 4

J2 (just about 3) has a box too and it's just full of all around preschool/summer fun. I have not gathered his things into one place yet, but hopefully his things will have a spot soon. Honestly, J2 is the busiest boy ever!! At the end of a day I marvel at all that he has done and how he just wants to keep moving. He'll come up to me at bed time and ask to paint and never wants to hear that it is time to rest for the night. The other day he spent nearly 3 hours in the sandbox! That morning he'd done play doh and cards and all sorts of things. He's a lot of fun, but Dan and I fervently agree that if we think E9 is a challenge to keep busy, J2 is going to blow him away- in terms of homeschooling challenges. Here are few of the offerings available to J2 this summer adventure.

Some new Usborne fun- train stories book and CD. It is a favorite at our house so the CD was on my list this Usborne year. The Woolly book is a sticker book. J2 is in absolute love with the Farmyard Tales. We read it nightly and sometimes during the day. We have a listening corner in the playroom with some soft chairs and a CD plus a basket full of books and more CDs and he loves to spend time there.

I picked these up the other day at Walmart- I seem to recall that our wooden alphabet puzzle is somewhat incomplete...it is a known fact that there are few letters in the heating duct leading to the boys' room. I'm just sayin'.

No adventure for J2 would be complete without Play Doh time and plenty of it! He and I love to mold dough together.

Remember those three hours at the sandbox?

Cusienaire alphabet book...

And of course the Cuisenaire rods- which I can see will not be enough if more than one child wants to participate at a time.

So, I hope to keep J2 busy with fun adventures this summer with a variety of fun things. We've also got the normal parade of preschooler time items. I like that post a lot. If I had a hall of fame of posts that one would be at the top!

Adventure Box 3

What started out as a racing box for I-5 turned into a Superhero Adventure for our boy!

Here are a few items for the box- coloring and sticker books. The other day I overheard him saying that these were ok, but he can't wait until he really gets into his box with all the crafts and activities...wasn't this my time off?

He must have begged half of yesterday for an art project. After dinner I finally went with an oil pastel city drawing...he wanted to do a Batman scene- of course!

Do you have any idea how messy oil pastels are for a lefty?? Here is the finished product green clouds and all! That's the joker in his copter flying over Gotham city. The symbol high in the night sky- we need you Batman!!

Ideas for this box: (hopefully these will meet with theme approval from the just about 6 yr old!)

• sticker and coloring book time
• super hero quests- mostly I've come up with reading quests. I have a good stock of post it notes that will that I will put around the house and he will have to dress up as a hero and read the words in order to complete the quest.
• model magic/play doh time- he can make as many batman and superman symbols as he wants!
• books- for his birthday he's getting a small stack of superhero books. We have one on the Flash which has all kinds of facts about speed. He's getting four more a lot like it so we'll be busy reading a lot.
  
• Still a work on progress- I'll update as I come up with more ideas. If you have any feel free to comment!

I should add a note about my coupon system- the materials for each of these boxes is in a large ziploc bag inside their regular school boxes. The box gets added to throughout the summer and if there is something that I have that does not fit in the box or is an activity that needs my supervision, when I load the boxes for that week (renew the materials or add a new item) I will put a coupon for the large item or activity in the bag instead. They can redeem the coupon when they want to do that thing.

Adventure Box 2

R8 has chosen animals and habitats for her adventure box this summer. Around here there is no shortage of information on animals!! E9 was into all kinds over the years so she has a lot of material to sort through.

Here are some sources for her adventure...

We added these nature handbooks to our collection two years ago and we've had a good time identifying local animals.

We have quite the collection of Usborne resources on the topic-

This DK Encyclopedia is a household favorite. Noah's Ark was a $1 at a Scholastic sale a few years ago. I'm just now pulling it out and chances are that J2 will be enjoying it because he has a new found fascination with Noah and his Ark. Shark Escape is just one of many Magic School Bus and Magic Treehouse books the we have on hand. R8 will be reading a ton of these for certain.

Fact books about habitats and animals

African savannas and The Ocean are two habitats she wants to learn about. We have many books in the series below about individual animal families. She's going to start with the grassland animals. We're going on safari!

I found them! These were hiding for a day while I remembered where I had stashed them. R8 gets to work on the animal sticker atlas and of course some origami animals.

Here we have another papercraft book on animals and other things plus the animal stencil book. We have many stencils to choose from in the stencil drawer as well.

Now that you've seen some of the resources on animals and habitats, I'll list some of the exciting things R8 will do throughout the summer.

• lots and lots of animal art (all media, stencils, habitat pics, etc.)
• sticker books
• dioramas- of course...who can wait?! (any Simpson's fans out there?)
• animal puppets- make some more with me
• habitat murals- I'm thinking a nice rainforest will be lovely
• share new information with us at the dinner table
• Sculpey animals
• Perler bead animals- beads put on a template and then ironed to fuse together
  

Adventure Box 1

It's that time of year and I know some of you have been waiting with bated breath on this year's adventure boxes. What are adventure boxes? It's an idea I saw last year on the FIAR boards where you and your child pick a theme and then the child is provided with materials to explore the adventure for the summer. This is a great way to encourage reading and other activities once school is finished for the year and it's a bunch of fun!

E9's has undergone some changes. We've been discussing these boxes since probably March or April depending on the child. For a long time he had chosen Redwall, but then didn't like most of the fun ideas I came up with- can you believe this? In the end, Dan came up with a few ideas and E9 loves them.

E9's Summer Adventure Part 1: Beginning Guitar

With his allowance a while back, E9 purchased a guitar from Target of all places. It seems like it will do the job of letting him learn a bit to start. We also bought some resources from Rainbow Resource for the job. Hopefully he will stick to it and continue on into the fall and beyond. He has his eye on some Jars of Clay sheet music which he desperately wants to learn to play!

Great little guitar but I would have thought it would come with more than a few cards with chords on them.

Notice how the strings are labeled. I don't know if that will be helpful or not, but we'll see.

We decided on this instructional book which comes with a CD and a DVD from Rainbow Resource. Also on its way is the supplemental song book for the same level. This series has room to grow if he wants to continue.

I wanted to be sure and include some music theory so he'll be doing this notespeller along the way. This will teach him the names of the notes as well as what each kind means.

Summer Adventure Part 2: Computer Programming

Dan also thought computer programming would be fun for E9 to learn this summer. Right now he is using a program called Scratch. It is more of a modular programming system developed at MIT. You click and drag different commands and make the object do certain things. It does a good job of teaching programming structure and some other basic things. All the kids are in love with it and ask to play around, but E9 has daily assignments left by Dan and they email each other back and forth during the day regarding said assignments. E9 learned how to send his finished product to Dan and then gets a reply with more directions or conversation. Pretty cool.

Below is a screen view of Scratch

Along the way, he has been learning new geometry skills and we had to break out the protractor! I will probably add to this post to update everyone on E9's progress.

There is another programming download for kids that has a fee, but allows them to program games to play. This has definitely peaked Dan's interest. I think it takes him back to his early programming days on the Commodore- is that right Dan? I'll have to get back to you on the name of it with a link... Ok I remembered it! It's called Phrogram. Word on the street is that if E9 shows stamina for learning programming, Dan will pay for Phrogram.