Celebrating Day 100

One of my favorite days to celebrate in our homeschool is nearly upon us--the 100th day of school. You might recognize some of the ideas listed below because they were posted here, hidden halfway down our list of Fun February Days. Others were used more recently.

Ways to Celebrate Day 100:

• Make a 100-link paper chain. (We kept the chain up for the rest of the year, adding five links every Friday. In the end, we had a 180-link chain. Very impressive.)
• Sit by the window and count 100 vehicles. In your creative journal, draw the 100th car that goes by. (One benefit of living along a busy road is that this took less than 10 minutes.)
• Write a 100-word story in your creative journal using as many words as possible that equal 100--century, dollar, centimeter, Ben Franklin ($100 bill).
• Choose an encyclopedia and write the entry words on page 100.
• Have our Traditional Day 100 Lunch of soft pretzels

• Build something using 100 LEGOs
• Put together 100-piece puzzles
• Draw a picture using 100 as the base

• Learn about America 100 years ago. Who was President? What did a new car cost? What was the price of gasoline? Record your answers in your creative journal.
• Run a 100-yard dash. (We did ours in snow and winter gear and broke no world record.)
• Estimate how long 100 inches is, then measure to see how accurately you estimated
• Write a special candy bar letter to your students. 
  
  
  
  
  

Finally, here is a link to 50 Ideas to Celebrate the 100th Day of School which is where I gleaned some of the ideas I used. One idea I love but haven't used is to visit a 100-year-old person and have them share memories of their childhood. 

What have you done to celebrate Day 100? Leave your ideas in the comments--especially if you don't mind me borrowing them. 

Native American Day

Last year we remembered Columbus Day with a corresponding art project. This year I decided to focus on Native Americans since my national day calendar lists both Native American Day and Columbus Day on October 11.

We started school by choosing Native American names for ourselves, then coming up with a system to fine anyone who used the wrong name. It is hard to teach old dogs new tricks, my friends. Abooksigun, in my experience, is infinitely harder to remember than Tyler. 

Bird Song, holding Singing Waters

John was at work when we chose new names, so the children kindly volunteered to help him out. Last suggestion I heard was Long John. 

Every time we forgot to call someone by their Indian name,
we had to pay the offended person in bead money.

I love our creative writing tablets because I can incorporate national days into the school day with little effort. This time, they copied Native American symbols into their tablets.

We used the same symbols when painting buffalo hides. To make the buffalo hides, we crumpled brown paper bags, smoothed them out, then painted symbols or pictures, using just a few colors. Detailed instructions are found on this website, where I sourced the idea.

Well, some of us painted symbols. One of us
just painted. 

Themed menus are a fun way to make any day feel celebratory, so I looked online for Native American recipes. Some of them were impossible to make since I didn't have a good source for bear grease or buffalo meat. Lacking those key ingredients, I knew our food would be inferior to the real deal. Despite its shady authenticity, our dinner menu suited our purposes nicely. 

Fry Bread

Fish

Succotash

Sweet Potatoes

Jerky

Nuts & Seeds

Nasaump, a cornmeal and berry porridge

It was a satisfying ending to a great day. 

Ten Ideas for Young Families on New Year's Eve

In an effort to add interesting activities to our holiday, I asked my friends how they celebrate New Year's Eve. I expected to be barraged with an entire arsenal of ideas, considering how many inspirational and creative friends I have. But after the first three responses said the same thing, I added this qualifier: "I'm looking for activities a little livelier than sleep." 

So for all my friends who need family-friendly ideas, you are welcome. 

1. Countdown Activity Bags
Write activities on slips of paper and put each one into a paper lunch sack. On the outside of each sack, write the hour the bag should be opened. This website gives you printable clock faces to put on the front of each sack. Your activities don't need to be exotic. Children love opening a bag that says, 'Make a snack' or 'Go light the sparklers.'

Instead of paper sacks, I plan to put my slips of paper in balloons and let the children pop the balloons to get the next activity. I already know my children love this idea because we sometimes do it for Mix-Up Day at school to determine the order of their classes.

2. Reminisce
Watch video clips or look at pictures you've taken of the family during the year. Reflect on the high and low points of your year. This is a great time to remember the good things the Lord has done for your family and to recount how He helped you through the tough times.

3. Photo Hunt
Print out as many photos of your year as you want and hide them around your house. I plan to print about 15. After everyone searches for and finds the pictures, make it a group effort to arrange them in chronological order. 

4. Set Goals for the Coming Year
Take time for everyone to write down personal and family goals for 2021. My children always ask for suggestions when we set annual goals. One of the suggestions I'll offer this year is a monthly book challenge and rewards for completing it. The children also contribute ideas for our family goals and we value their input.

When setting your goals, remember to make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

5. Play Games
Charades. Board games. Rhythm games, such as "Oh Pass the Shoe" which we plan to teach to our children this week. Hide and Go Seek in the dark. Hide the Thimble making all levels of the house fair game to hide the object in. Musical chairs. Occupation. Swat. 

6. The Ball
In advance, make a basketball-sized ball by wrapping lots of prizes in layers of plastic wrap. Note: one year, the ball sat in a hot car for a few hours and the layers shrank, making them particularly challenging to unwrap. I'm not advocating that step, but it did add new levels of desperate energy to the game, even in adults. 

To play, participants sit in a circle around a table with the ball in the middle. Everyone takes turn rolling a die. As soon as someone rolls a six, the game begins. The one who rolled the six begins unwrapping the layers of the ball as fast as possible, keeping any prize he uncovers. Meanwhile, the person beside him rolls the dice on high speed and can grab the ball as soon as he gets a six. Players are not allowed to gouge into multiple layers or use tools of any kind. The plastic needs to be unwrapped layer by layer. 

Prizes in the ball can be anything from breath mints and candy to larger items like garden gloves or money. The core of the ball usually highest in value. 

7. Feed the Fun
Snacks, of course. Baked Brie with crackers. Nuts and chocolates. Flavored popcorn. Let your children help plan the snack.

8. Time Capsule
Family time capsules intrigue me, but I can't get past the idea of needing to wait years and years to reopen them. If you don't mind the suspense, fill a capsule with items significant to your family in 2020. Each family member contributes something for the capsule. Then package it up and put it out of sight until the agreed upon date when it can be opened. 

A variation to the time capsule is to do a Memory Jar this coming year, an idea I found here. Get a large glass container and fill the jar throughout the year with mementos of significant events or other keepsakes. If we would have done a Memory Jar in 2020, I would have dropped in things like a face mask, my son's hospital band, an article about the election, a ticket stub from Strasburg's train, and one of my 3-year-old's pocket knives (any twig with a point). The jar is never off-limits, so if you add something prematurely like a game piece, you can retrieve it without breaking a contract. Keep the jar forever, giving your posterity a container of tangible memories. 

9. Add Some Sparkle
As a family with young children, I do not promise we will stay up until midnight. But even if we decide, for sanity's sake, to turn in early, we will light our sparklers and share sparkling grape juice at the end of the party. 

Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought putting children to bed before midnight was acceptable:

Her next comment was, 
"And put them to bed around 8 or 9."

10. Slumber Party
Gather your gear and sleep in the living room as a family. We traditionally do this for every birthday and I'm working up my courage to suggest it for New Year's Eve as well. One of my hesitations is that the hardwood gets more unforgiving every time. The other hesitation is that we had two short nights last week and it has taken our youngest a few days to restore his good humor. I might leave this idea for you, at least this year. 

However you choose to observe the holiday, I trust it will include meaningful family times and create happy memories. May you enter 2021 with faith in God, peace in your heart, and hope for tomorrow. 

National One Cent Day 2020

One of my children's favorite national holidays is National One Cent Day. Last year, they earned pennies throughout their school day for things like neat writing, diligence, and improved scores. I put prices on everything in my rewards tote and they had fun shopping with their pennies at my "yard sale."

This year, National One Cent Day fell at a time when my rewards box was empty, so I created Mom's Store.

Mom's Store

--Stay up past bedtime $.10

--Dessert for supper $.10

--Eyewitness space packet $.08

--Do a craft $.05

--Do a science experiment $.05

--Get a printed coloring page $.04

--Eat a mint $.02

I made a second list to help them earn more money than neat writing can buy them:

Job Chart

--Wash dishes $.02

--Set Table $.01

--Clear Table $.01

--Wash leaves of plant $.02

--Pick up toys $.02

--Sweep floors $.03

--Wash stairwell wall $.02

--Do Math Brain* 5x $.05

*Math Brain is an electronic flashcard game.

The children loved my store and told me this was their favorite day of the week. Meanwhile, my entire afternoon was spent on the run. They kept me busy finding science experiments and crafts, sourcing supplies from around the house, helping one child make a paper machê globe while the other needing continual oversight to make a camera case on my sewing machine. I had dessert in the oven, dishes piled high, and a child at my elbow asking, "Mom, is there any way I can please earn three more pennies?" 

I plan to do this again next year, but being wiser and more experienced, my store prices are going to double. I want my children to have fun and earn a reward (notice the singular tense), but they don't need to buy out the store. 

It so happened that National One Cent Day landed on April 1, the day we planned to have a Daffy Dinner with some friends. When our friends couldn't come because of a stay-at-home order, I promised the children we would do the meal anyway, just with us. John came home from the office in time to see the children set his spot at the table with a large kettle for a plate, a gravy pitcher for a cup, and a ladle as a spoon. Good sport that he is, he played along with us and helped make it a fun meal.

Griddle plate, corn handle fork,
spaghetti keeper cup

9x13 plate, baby spoon/fork, gravy shaker cup

Serving bowl plate, baby fork/serving spoon,
quart jar for a cup

After my Overly Ambitious day, I was relieved to see that the next national day I planned to celebrate was National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. You can't get easier than that.

Bonus picture:  As I typed this post, the robot and sign were placed at my elbow. This is what you get when a ten-year-old boy has been on the property for three weeks solid.

Play-Dough Pals

One of my newest goals is to do something fun with the children once a week. I had that on my mind when I woke up yesterday and then was inspired to add googly eyes and pipe cleaners to the fun of Play-Dough.

Not all the results were recognizable. Below is Sophia’s cat "with fur," she said, in reference to the strands of pipe cleaner.  

And here is a bear with very big eyes so he can see in the dark. I’m not sure which woods he lives in, but if you are there, I suggest you move. Rapidly.

Others didn’t take quite as much imagination to decipher. Tyler’s rabbit, for example, at least has a puffy tail and bunny ears.

 And here’s a mouse.

And a frog. 

The good thing was that regardless of the results, it was a fun project for everyone, the mama included.  

Book Lover's Day

Here's a really fun idea to do with your children on Book Lover's Day (August 9):
Choose a book that your children love, then base a day on the book's happenings, on the food that's eaten, and on the characters themselves.

Our Book Lover's Day celebration took place a little early this year.  It morphed into being when my son started begging for the "birthday soup" in the Little Bear book.  Ideas started forming, and "Little Bear Day" was born.

the Inspiration

The Space Helmet...
We started our morning with creating a space helmet for my Little Bear to go to the moon.  Fortunately for me, the helmet pictured in the book was pretty basic and appeared to be a cardboard box with mattress springs sticking out the top.  I didn't have spare mattress springs running around, but pipe cleaners worked well as a substitute.  My little guy had a lot of fun pretending to go the moon, both by leaping off the couch and by ripping around outside.  And, yes, I forgive anyone who passed by our house that morning, saw a child racing around the yard in a hilarious little hat, and regretfully concluded that we all lost our sanity entirely around here.  Even knowing the full story plus being the creator of the hat myself, the sight made me laugh all day.

5...4...3...2...1... Blast Off!

A Tea Party!
For mid-morning snack, we mimicked a tea party in another Little Bear book we had borrowed once.  We invited "Emily" over for tea--who liked it so much she threw manners to the wind and guzzled cup after cup of "tea".  (Knowing what my two little bears could do to my carpet with a pot of real tea, I used water instead and they had just as much fun with that.  More fun, in fact, because the Mother Bear didn't need to monitor the tea pot as closely.)

Probably guzzling cup number 5

Hmm...the Birthday Soup
The much looked forward to, much hungered after Birthday Soup lunch was a grave disappointment to my Little Bear, which didn't surprise me.  Before requesting the soup, he apparently hadn't thought through the ingredient list:  peas, potatoes, carrots and tomatoes.  Of that list, carrots are the only ones he truly likes.  And included in that list are The Dreaded Peas, which he names when he tries to come up with the worst food he can think of.  In his mind, peas should be listed in the cruel and unusual punishment category or saved as a last resort to reform especially unruly criminals in castle prisons. The soup, then, was a great disappointment, but since it was Little Bear Day and Birthday Soup Itself, he ate it bravely enough.  Come to think of it, he hasn't gotten hungry for it since.  Strange.

The Soup Itself

Fortunately, there was a birthday cake to redeem Little Bear's lunch, which in the book, Mother Bear walks in with just in time for the party.  My Little Bear feels left out that he only has a birthday once a year and even asked me why he doesn't have as many birthdays as other people. It was down his alley, then, to have us sing "Happy Birthday, Little Bear" to him and let him blow out the four blue candles (his choice both in color and number).

the Redemption

The grand finale of Little Bear Day was at nap time when Mother Bear sat on his bed and told him stories about all the activities Little Bear had done that day.  I had volunteered to read the book to him, but he opted to have me tell stories about Little Bear (himself) just like Mother Bear does in the book.

When the stories were done, I pulled the sheet up and tucked it in around his little shoulders.  He was smiling.
"Mommy?"
"What, Little Bear?"
"You are my sweetheart!"
Aw. Any effort I put into the day was well worth it.

Hand-print Art

I was going to be babysitting for three extra children one afternoon and wanted something creative to do with them.  One of the first things that came to my mind was drawing animals using your hand-print, an idea taken from www.hellokids.com. I had tried this out on my four-year-old one day when he was bored.  It was a hit with him (and his mom!) so I introduced the idea to the children I was babysitting. Once again, it was a winner!  Hey, try it sometime!