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Back when I was home schooling, as part of our Farmer Boy unit, we made candles. In the book Almanzo talks about taking his lantern out to do chores and walk to his room at night. We discussed how they didn’t have electricity for lighting and instead used candles. We talked about how their method to make candles was different than how we were making candles. I think Farm Kid1 got the idea & I hope this makes the book a bit more relatable.

SUPPLIES

The supplies are fairly simple. The necessities are wax, wick & a mold. We used a waxy coated dixie cup as our mold. Our extra goodies were crayons for color & liquid apple scent.

MELTING WAX

Next, fill a pot with a couple inches of water & set it over a high stove top setting. Once boiling, turn the heat down a bit. Place a bar of wax & crayon pieces in a tin can & place the can in the hot water to melt the wax. The crayons melted quicker than the bar of wax.

THE MOLD

Start by cutting a length of wick about 3″ taller than your mold. Tape one end of the wick to the bottom of your mold & wrap the other end around a pencil. I found that we needed to tape the wick to the pencil or it wanted to unwind. I also cut notches out of the dixie cup to hold the pencil.

Using a pot holder, pour the melted hot wax into your mold.

Now wait for the wax to harden. Our one box of wax made 8 little candles.

FINISHING THE CANDLE

After the wax is hard, peel off the mold and voila a candle. I love how most of the crayon wax settled toward the bottom of the candle giving it a gradient appearance.

Trim the wick to about half an inch.

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Is it silly that I’ve always wanted to do a covered wagon project? Well, silly or not, I finally had a good excuse to have the boys make their own covered wagons. We were studying the days of the pioneers. We just had to make a covered wagon to go along with that era… And to tell the truth, I was hoping to make an entire old west town out of cardboard. But, we ran out of time & now it’s time to move on to other subjects. Hopefully we can still make the old west town one day.

THE WAGONS

Farm Kid2 chose to add oxen. Love that.

The base of the wagon was a small cardboard box. They covered the box with strips of brown construction paper to resemble wood.

This is not a fancy craft. The hoops holding up the canvas are pieces of wire shoved between layers of the cardboard. As I’ve mentioned before, awhile ago we dyed paper, yarn & fabric. They used scraps of that fabric as the canvas on their covered wagon, which is why their canvas is tinted purple. We used the dyed yarn to tie the canvas to the covered wagon.

The axles & wheels are tinker toys & cardboard.

They were given cardboard scraps & paper to add details to their wagon, such as people & their seats.

I love how they added kids looking out the back like you see in pictures.

I’m really happy with how these turned out & the effort the kids put into making them. They seemed to have a great time with this project.

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We recently checked out a bunch of Eric Carle books from the library. We did a variety of activities based on the books, but by far our favorite was making a tissue paper collage Eric Carle style.

The Books

Maybe I grew up under a rock, but I sure don’t remember Eric Carle books as a kid. But yet, when we looked at the copyright many were dated even before I was born. I only became aware of him once I had kids.

One of my favorite things about his books are that they’ve got that extra something. The firefly lights up, the click beetle clicks & the rubber ducky squeaks. My favorite extras are the simple black dots in the book Hello, Red Fox. The whole book is tricking your eyes. You stare at the green fox for x amount of time, then stare at the black dot on the next page & you will see a faint red fox. Amazing. Fun. Exciting. There are multiple animals & colors to try throughout the story. The kids love it.

Our Collage

The beginning of our fancy cereal box paint palette looked like this…

.. When we were done, it looked like this. We definitely had fun with this project.

We read that Eric Carle makes most of his collages out of tissue paper & paint. So, that’s what we did. Layer by layer the kids & I added paint to the tissue paper, using different stroke techniques. It was a bit difficult at first since the tissue paper rips so easily. But, we soon got the hang of it & enjoyed the craziness of this type of painting.

We decided to make a group collage. The base is a piece of white poster board. Farm Kid1 made the Santa and sleigh, Farm Kid2 made Rudolph & I was in charge of the background.

Farm Kid2, a kinder, had some trouble cutting the tissue paper. Farm Kid1, 8 years old, had an easier time.

Farm Kid2 also made this snail.

Farm Kid1 made these creatures.

This was such a fun project. And, we have left over painted tissue paper so we will get to do it again soon.

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We started reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder this week. The pioneer days are my favorite time in history & I am a huge Little House fan. So, this is going to be a fun unit for me to explore with Farm Kid1

I’ve got a few pioneer activities & crafts planned. But we came across a surprise experiment to try while reading Chapter 3. It says: “You can fill a glass full to the brim with milk, and fill another glass of the same size brim full of popcorn, and then you can put all the popcorn kernel by kernel into the milk, and the milk will not run over. You cannot do this with bread. Popcorn and milk are the only two things that will go into the same place.” I don’t remember learning this little tid bit when I read this book as a kid, but I was sure excited to read it now as an adult. The next day we tried it. And, by golly, it worked.

Our glasses full to the brim with milk and popcorn.

Kernel by kernel, Farm Kid1 placed the popcorn into the milk.

Yep, all that popcorn fit into the glass of milk & not a drip of milk slipped out.

We had an old zucchini from the garden that we were going to feed to the chickens. I cut it up & we added it to a glass of milk to see what would happen. The milk overflowed.

Well, that was fun. Now we have to figure out why it works.

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