Category: Arts & Crafts

Arts & Crafts, Physics, Science

Dragonfly Helicopters & other Science Toys

HomeschoolFreebie |

SCIENCE TOY MAKER: Mysterious, Kinetic, Noisy, Do-It-Yourself Science Projects that Entice Scientific Investigation

We featured this site in years past, but it just keeps getting better and better as they add dozens more way cool science toys,  gadgets and gizmos (both easy & advanced)  that you can make at home to demonstrate all sorts of scientific principles. (We especially like the “dolphin ring” video and project!) Bookmark this site and refer to it whenever you want a hands-on toy building project that has scientific value & your kids will love to play with!

Click here to go to the site!

Arts & Crafts, Video

The Magic Horse

HomeschoolFreebie |

Have you ever heard of Charlotte (Lotte) Reiniger? She was one of the foremost pioneers of hand-cut paper silhouette animation, and produced the very first full length animated feature in Germany in 1923. Her work is finely detailed and truly amazing and captivates young viewers.

The Magic Horse is a beautiful example of Reiniger’s paper silhouette animation. This short film (10 minutes) made in 1953 is a delightful adaptation of the Grimm’s Fairy Tale. Watch it below, or if the video below does not show up on your device, click here to view it on Youtube.

Arts & Crafts, Nature Studies

The Common Birds coloring book

HomeschoolFreebie |

The Common Birds Coloring Book from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology contains terrific line drawings of over 50 common feeder birds. You can download the coloring book and print out pages as you need them, and let your students color the images using a field guide. There are also identification questions on each page to help your students learn to spot these birds in the field.

Most of the pictures in this coloring book were drawn by the noted bird artist and ornithologist, Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1872-1927). Fuertes, a native of Ithaca, New York and a Cornell University graduate, is known for his realistic bird art. Look for his signature initials: L. A. F. The other drawings are by William Montagna, signature initials: W. M. All are gorgeous!

To download the PDF coloring book, CLICK HERE

Art Appreciation, Arts & Crafts

The Art Zone

HomeschoolFreebie |

The National Gallery of Art has a great interactive art  site called THE ART ZONE – an amazing array of art project activities for kids to create their  own works of art online.  Create portraits, animated scenes and landscape paintings in the style of American primitive artists… and much, much more! Loads of mind-boggling computer art fun here.

Download the Art Zone or NGAkids App applications to your Macintosh or Windows-based computer, or order the free CDs. There is also an iOS version of the NGAkids App for iPad. These interactives are not available for online play.

Click here to go to the site!

Arts & Crafts

Advanced Animation by Preston Blair

HomeschoolFreebie |

If you have a student who is interested in animation, here’s a wonderful resource that they will love:

“Advanced Animation” by Preston Blair remains one the a all-time greatest cartooning books ever…and every page has been lovingly scanned and posted by the wonderful folks at AnimationResources.org

From the website:

Preston Blair was one of the finest draftsmen to have ever worked in the field of animation. He animated Mickey Mouse in “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, and he was one of the top animators at MGM, where he animated the legendary Red Hot Riding Hood. His book, titled simply “Animation” crystalized the basic principles of cartoon animation, and profoundly influenced a whole generation of young animators. He passed away in 1995.

Preston Blair’s book “Advanced Animation” is one of the best books on the subject. It is the text Animation Resources’ drawing course is based upon. When Blair put the book together in 1947, he used the characters he had animated at Disney and MGM to illustrate the various basic principles of animation. Apparently, the rights to use some of the characters were revoked after the book was already in the stores. Publication was halted for a time, and he was forced to redraw most of the MGM characters, replacing them with generic characters of his own design. The revised edition went on to become a classic, and the first edition was forgotten.

You can go to THIS PAGE on AnimationResources.org and read more about this classic book and the online course they offer based on the book…

Or for a direct link to the PDF download itself, you can RIGHT CLICK HERE and “save link” to your computer. Mac users, press the “control” key then click the link and save file to your Mac.

Arts & Crafts, Language Arts, Literature, Nature Studies, Reading

A Beatrix Potter Treasury

HomeschoolFreebie |

Today we feature a wonderful treasure chest of books, audios, videos and lessons about the stories of Beatrix Potter. Her classic artwork and stories are utterly delightful and should be known by every child. What better stories than these to share with your littles?

CLICK HERE to read almost all Beatrix Potter’s original picture books online or download them in kindle and mobi format at Project Gutenberg.

CLICK HERE to listen to almost all Beatrix Potter’s books online or to download them in mp3 format or to iTunes. There are three massive collections on this Librivox page, and you’ll just have to pick and choose which narrators you enjoy best. You can follow along the readings using the picture books from the Project Gutenberg link above.

CLICK HERE to go to a youtube page which offers up a couple dozen Beatrix Potter stories and related videos, including all the episodes of “The World of Peter Rabbit and His Friends”. (As always with youtube, parental oversight is recommended.)

Resources from PeterRabbit.com:  CLICK HERE to go to the download page — and don’t miss the 39 page PDF of Beatrix Potter Teaching Resources!

Arts & Crafts, Just for Fun, Nature Studies, Physics, Science

Projects, Experiments & Hands-On Fun

HomeschoolFreebie |

TheHappyHousewife.com has a great collection of almost 100 hands-on projects, crafts and experiments especially for homeschoolers, on all sorts of interesting topics, including:

Turkey Feather Science
Testing for Starch
Milk Fireworks
The Physics of the Trapeze
Fun Ways to Improve Writing Skills
Buoyancy Experiments
…and dozens more.

CLICK HERE Take a look and browse through the collection yourself!

Arts & Crafts

Art for Teens Who Say They Can’t Draw

HomeschoolFreebie |

StartsAtEight.com has a great post on how to help your tween and teen-aged student dramatically improve their drawing skills, utilizing “right brain / left brain” exercises as popularized in the book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. Included are links to five downloadable lessons to help guide your student into putting this into practice.

PS. This really works.

CLICK HERE to go to the website!

Arts & Crafts

Origami Airplanes, Whirly-Gigs, Boats and more

HomeschoolFreebie |

ORIGAMI AIRPLANES, WHIRLY-GIGS & BOATS!

Here’s a great site with dozens of animated tutorials on how to fold high-performance paper airplanes, whirly-gigs, boats and more. We could say this is a great way to develop hand-eye coordination and pick up some practical examples of physics & geometry in action, but naaaah —  the plain fact is these are great fun and a neat way for your kids to occupy themselves after study time is over, and create  some great playthings.

The site has a lot of ads, so just pay attention where you click. The How-to videos are at the bottom of each page.

CLICK HERE to go to the website!