The Combs Krewe

Today the boys each made a pilgrim couple out of toilet paper rolls. I'm not sure the pilgrims clothes are approved colors especially Ryland's pilgrim ladies blue hair! Tomorrow we will be talking about Squanto and making some Native American crafts.

This week instead of our regularly scheduled schooling the middles (namely Jathan and Ryland) and I are studying about Thanksgiving. Jathan and I have already been reading a great historical fiction series about the Pilgrims called The American Adventure. Book one tells about life in England and Holland as well as the treacherous journey to America. Book two is centered around the experiences of the two main characters, siblings John and Sarah, in their new home, Plymouth.  Today we used the Abeka book Thanksgiving flash-a-cards to talk about how the Thanksgiving story began focusing on the Mayflower. After reading we got crafty! I had taken an empty orange juice container and cut off one side. Jathan cut strips of brown construction paper then glued the "boards" into place on his ship.  Later we cut sails from white construction paper and hole punched them at the tops and bottoms. We slid them onto a dowel rod and secured it to the inside of the boat using a piece of clay. T...

It's Mardi Gras season and I have loved collecting little things to decorate our home with. Here's a few pictures of our decorations. The wreath on our front door came from Sam's last year. I thought it was an excellent deal since I'd seen several very pricey ones in home stores. I love all the colors and glitter. I added some ornaments in Mardi Gras colors to the urn on our table then circled it with a boa and added some masks and beads. (Sorry for some reason I couldn't get the picture to turn upright!) The top of our bookshelf just behind the table holds an umbrella that Keeleigh got at last year's parade, some boas and beads, and--my favorite--a little jester doll from the French Market. I decorated over the balcony door with beads, a boa, and some masks. The outside of the balcony door holds the rag wreath I made last year. (Again, couldn't figure out how to get it turned the right way.) And on the railing ar...

Over Fall Break we took a little hiatus from our usual school work and studied the arts Halloween style. The little kids each had a monster face a day to design. First we did jack-o-lantern mosaics.    Next they painted Frankenstein's monster and used buttons, stickers, and yarn to make him a face.    The boys painted their witches hat and face then glued on eyes, noses, and mouths cut from magazines (also a very fun thing to do on real pumpkins!). Very Picasso, don't you think? For Dracula, they went freestyle and drew on faces with crayons. The little kids worked on learning a poem together. We chose, "Five Little Pumpkins." To help we did a craft to go along with the poem. First we gathered a few acorn and painted them orange. I made a gate out of craft sticks. When the orange paint was dry we drew Jack-O-Lantern faces on the acorns. Then we used our gate and acorns to act out the poem as we said it. Here Jathan is being the wind and th...

I like to go all out for every holiday so I planned some fun for Cinco de Mayo. First we all watched an educational video about the Mexican holiday. You know the one--from the 80s. The same one we watched on the TV that had to be rolled into the classroom. Ha ha. It actually wasn't half bad! Then we made some paper mache maracas! Here's how we made them. First we made our paste out of flour and water. Jathan stirred. Then Ryland and I tore newspaper into small pieces and Piper threw every piece within her reach onto the floor. When our newspaper and paste was ready, we used a funnel to put beans into water balloons. This step later proved to be useless so don't do this step! Next we spilled half our bag of beans but Ryland thought it was great fun to pick them up and put them in a bowl so it all worked out just fine. = ) I blew up the water balloons and tied them off. Then I folded a piece of paper into a handle shape and used masking t...