A Note From the Founder – A New School Year, Are You Prepared?
Kerry Cordy – Founder
Where did the summer go? I can’t believe school is getting ready to start once again. Frontier Girls troops and Quest Clubs are getting ready to start back up again and homeschooling families are making plans for another school year. Now is the time to get organized.
If you plan to use our Caspio badge tracking system, make sure to create an account for it and get familiar with how it works. It may not be pretty, but it works wells. There is a learning curve though, so feel free to reach out and email me at kerry@curiosityuntamed.com if you run into any issues.
If you are a homeschool family, look through your curriculum for the year and find badges that will supplement what you plan to study while allowing your kids to chase what makes them curious. For example if you are studying the Pony Express for history, some badges that expand interest are things like the Horses badge, Mail Art, Map Reading, U.S. Geography, Stamp Collecting, or Weather. Print out the badges you plan to earn and put the requirements in with any curriculum it supplements so you can work requirements into your school day.
For Frontier Girls Troops and Quest Clubs, getting up and running again, start planning out which badges your group many earn this year. What field trips can you take to align with each badge? Get them on the calendar. Don’t forget we have quite a few meetin plans/unit studies already posted on the blog under the Badge Resources section in case you need a quick ready made meeting.
September and October are a great time to hold investiture and rededication ceremonies as well as advancement ceremonies if you didn’t do it at the end of the school year. If you click on the Ceremonies category of the blog, there are several ceremony ideas already made, but feel free to get creative.
September will be here before you know it. A little preplanning now will save a lot of chaos and stress later!
New Badges Added
Coral Reefs, Heat Wave, Pancakes
Canva, A Useful Resource
If you have never heard of the Canva website, I have a treat for you. Canva is a free online design and publishing tool that allows users to create a wide range of visual content with ease. Canva offers a vast library of customizable templates, images, icons, and fonts, enabling users to design anything from social media graphics, presentations, and posters to infographics, newsletters, and worksheets.
Key Uses of Canva:
- Graphic Design: Create professional-quality graphics without needing advanced design skills.
- Marketing Materials: Develop brochures, flyers, and advertisements to promote your troop/club.
- Presentations: Build visually appealing slide decks for meetings, presentations, or educational purposes.
- Educational Resources: Craft worksheets, lesson plans, and educational infographics for teachers and homeschoolers.
- Event Invitations: Design custom invitations for parties, award ceremonies, and other events.
- Calendars: Create custom seasonal calendar templates.
- Newsletters: Build newsletter templates that are easily customizable from month to month.
- Social Media Content: Design engaging posts, stories, and banners for platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Canva is a versatile tool that greatly benefits homeschooling and troop management. For homeschoolers, Canva’s user-friendly design features help create engaging lesson plans, worksheets, and visual aids, making learning more interactive and fun. It offers numerous templates for educational posters, infographics, and presentations. For troop management, Canva simplifies creating newsletters, schedules, and badges. Leaders can design eye-catching flyers for events and social media posts to keep everyone informed and connected.
Life Skills Achievement Award
Teaching life skills to children is essential for their development into capable adults. These skills range from basic tasks like cooking and cleaning to more complex abilities such as time management and problem-solving. Our Life Skills Achievement Award provides a structured way to ensure children learn and master these skills, with age-appropriate challenges that become more difficult as they advance.
Encouraging children to earn this award builds confidence and independence, giving them a sense of accomplishment. Mastering life skills also prepares them to face real-world challenges with competence and resilience, fostering responsibility and self-reliance. The Life Skills Achievement Award equips them with the tools needed for successful, self-sufficient lives, making it a valuable part of their education.
9 Fun Timeline Activities To Make History Come Alive
Many of our badges require learning the history of the topic you are studying. Often, older age levels need to create a timeline of important events they’ve learned about the badge topic.
Engaging in fun timeline activities to make history come alive is a powerful way to enhance learning. Playful and hands-on activities not only make learning enjoyable but also boost memory retention, critical thinking, and teamwork skills. This blog explores a variety of fun timeline activities designed to bring history to life for learners of all ages. From interactive timeline games to creative crafts that illustrate historical events, we aim to show how play and physical activity can transform education into an exciting and dynamic experience. Discover new ways to make history memorable and meaningful with fun timeline activities that bring history to life.
READ OUR BLOG to learn how to create:
- Timeline board games
- A living timeline
- Comic book timelines
- Edible timelines
- Timeline scavenger hunts
- Timeline Bingo games
- Diorama timelines
- Timeline songs
- A Memory Match timeline game
Free Online Art Classes
During COVID, my daughter,Katie, had to teach her art classes online via Zoom. A lot of kids would miss the class for one reason or another so she started posting the classes on Youtube so they could take the class at their leisure. As COVID restrictions came to an end, she has continued to post a variety of her lessons online to make it easier for substitute teachers when they have to teach her class.
Katie loves to include history, culture and science in her art lessons so many of the lessons come with a quick mini lecture that coordinates with the art skill she is teaching that day. For example for her Gond Inspired Fish lesson, there is not only a video showing the technique, but a mini lecture as well that discusses the the Gond people of India, their beliefs, what their art represents, and how it is created.
If you are looking for a free and easy art resource, check out her full list of videos. (And no, Katie does not make money off this channel as these lesson plans are owned by the Chico Unified School District.)
Making Music Challenge – Create an Instrument You Can Play
Possible Supplies:
- Shoebox
- Rubberbands
- Jumbo craft sticks
- Dried Beans
- Paper plates
- Metal coffee cans
- Tape
- String
- Pots
- Spoons
Using supplies such as those listed above, create one or more musical instruments you can play.
- Try adding a new material to your instrument or making the same instrument from a different material. Does it sound better or worse?
- Does playing your instrument harder or softer affect the way it sounds?
- Decorate your instrument without chaning the sound.
- Does the size and shape of your instrument affect the sound?
- Learn about homemade instruments such as cigar box guitars. Can you make something similar?
Need some ideas? Check out how to make a cardboard guitar by Collective Gen.
