Old World Wisconsin

Earlier in the month we went on a field trip with another home school family to Old World Wisconsin. I was obsessed with Little House as a girl so I love visiting outdoor pioneer/settlement museums. Anytime, there is a chance to visit one I'm on board. Luckily, my kiddos seem to enjoy them too.

I was super impressed with Old World Wisconsin. I would say it's our favorite pioneer museum we've visited. There were a ton of hands-on-activities. I love walking around and looking at too old and too rare antiques but with a bunch of kiddos that can get old pretty fast. Old World Wisconsin had plenty of don't touch treasures, but they also had lots of things kids could put their hands on and try.

Little Lady is similar to how I was as a little girl and loved every bit of the museum. If she could she'd go back in time and be a pioneer. Her favorite activities were combing wool and visiting the school house. She was excited to try everything though. I found it it particularly amusing how entranced she was watching the blacksmith demonstration. Other times she's hasn't cared much for the blacksmith but this time the blacksmith was a woman - Little Lady and her friend were mesmerized.

BabyZ favorite part was definitively the wooden shoes at the German farm. I was admiring the dining room when all the sudden BabyZ is on the floor beside me begging to have his shoes taken off. I thought at first their must me a rock or something in them making him uncomfortable. He, however, had just spied some of the other kids trying on the wooden shoes and had to join the fun.

I love this ↓ picture of BabyZ and his little buddy watching so intently along with their siblings.

Big Buddy and Mini Man's favorite part had little to do with the history. They were delighted by all the nature they found: grasshoppers, toads, frogs, salamanders, etc. I had to keep helping them refocus on the actually museum exhibits. At first this was a little frustrating; then I just decided to embrace it...this is probably what 8 and 10 year-old pioneer boys would have been doing anyways.

Comments

A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago. I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

This post is a long one, click thru to see more »

Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity, reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" - I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

This post is a long one, click thru to see more »

Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.

This post is a long one, click thru to see more »

Joyfully Weary

Search This Blog