Monday, August 15, 2011

S is for Stamps - ABCs of Homeschooling

On 5 Kids and a Dog, there's a series called the ABCs of Homeschooling.  This week's letter is "S." 

Alphabet ATC or ACEO Available - Needlefelted Letter S ...is for Stamps.

For many years, Sophia and Olivia have collected stamps. They each have books designed to hold their stamp collection.

Olivia Working on Her Stamp Collection
Olivia was five years old when she started her stamp collection. It was a good math activity (e.g., sorting, grouping).

They have divided their stamps into categories such as horses, wild animals, sea life, queens, royalty, U.S. Presidents, flowers, and life during various time periods (e.g., American Revolution, WWII).

Going through Stamps in Home Ec
Sophia and friends going through stamps from the 1940s as they learned about WWII, Victory Gardens, and cooking during that time period.

The girls have enjoyed choosing a theme each year and putting together a display for the county fair. This year, Sophia's theme was the American Revolution. She received a red ribbon. Olivia's theme was birds. She received a Grand Champion for her display.

Olivia at County Fair with Panda Stamp Collection
Olivia with a Stamp collection focused on pandas. She was 5 years old in this picture.

In addition to collecting postage stamps, the girls also use stamps in arts and crafts projects and artist trading cards (ATCs) that they've made.

Decoupage Jar - Homemade Christmas Gift
Sophia making a decoupage jar with postage stamps, handmade paper, and other images cut from a variety of sources.

They also use stamps for geography. During the past several years, the girls have been doing a multi-disciplinary, alphabetical unit study about different countries. For each country they studied, they added three or more stamps from that country.

Vietnamese Stamps
Stamps from Vietnam.

Starting with the 2011-2012 homeschooling year, we're going to be doing a multi-year, multi-disciplinary unit study about each state in the United States. The girls will be looking at stamps that we have on hand and determining to which state they belong.

For example, if a person is featured on a stamp, they need to find out who the person is, where they were born/died, and where they spent the majority of their life. From that information, the girls can best figure out which state a stamp should be placed in.

****Note: this post is written by Harvest Moon by Hand. If it appears on kidsrecipes.us it is stolen and is being used without the author's permission. *****

3 comments:

Naomi said...

That stamp project sounds like a really cool idea! Sounds like fun!

It is such a shame that you had to add that disclaimer at the end. It's sad that it came to that!

Martha said...

Hi! I'm visiting from ABC's of Homeschooling. Using postage stamps in the way you described must be a lot of fun for your family.

I collected stamps as a child so now I have been inspired to dig out my albums and share them with my children.

Dawn @ 5 Kids and a Dog said...

That sounds like a neat project! I bet you could solicit stamps from all over the world by asking on Twitter! Just a thought. :)

Oh, where you have your note at the bottom, link 'Harvest Moon By Hand' to your site so people can click over. The links stay intact in the posts when they get pulled.