Fun With Paper

Both my kids really enjoy making things out of paper. I love it too because it is inexpensive, keeps them entertained, often correlates with some unit study we are doing, and helps with fine motor skills. We are eclectic homeschoolers which means I like to pull ideas from many educational and homeschooling approaches and methods. I try to pick what motivates and works best with my two children's learning styles. One of the many things that inspires Jacob to learn is paper crafts. Certainly not every child is going to enjoy paper crafts. If your child does like paper crafts, adding related ones into your school day can generate more enthusiasm for a subject. At the Kids Love Learning Store, you will find a number of different paper craft books listed under different subject areas.

This year for history we are following the classical approach. We plan to study world history for two years and then United States history for two years in a chronological fashion. I borrowed a popular world history curriculum from the library and they had some good ideas for activities to complement the study of world history but also some ideas that I thought were a bit out there. The curriculum, which will remain unnamed, had a very interesting idea for an activity when studying ancient Egypt. The activity was to mummify a chicken. Now some of you Moms or Dads may have tried this, and kudos to you. I personally don't have time for such activities and I am not a huge fan of big messes or salmonella.

Instead of mummifying a chicken, Jacob was able to play a short on-line computer game that allowed him to create a mummy just like the Egyptians did. He also made a lovely three dimensional paper pyramid, built a pyramid out of legos, and demonstrated how the Egyptians moved large stones using hand weights and pencil rollers. I ended up creating a world history unit study of my own because I couldn't find one to buy that I really liked. My self created world history unit study has been a hit with Jacob and I plan to share it in sections on this blog as we move through the year and it gets tweaked a bit more.

Anyway, the whole point of this post was to introduce some of my favorite websites where you can print off fun and educational paper crafts and hopefully avoid mummifying any chickens.

Paper toys (you can find a pyramid at the first link):
http://papertoys.com/

http://www.thetoymaker.com/2Toys.html

Paper dolls:
http://marilee.us/paperdolls2.html#Printchildren

more paper dolls

Printable coloring pages of art masterpieces and lots more:
http://www.colormeonline.com/default.htm

Pop-up cards to print and make:
http://robertsabuda.com/popmakesimple.asp

Origami models with printable diagrams:
http://www.oriland.com/studio/main.asp