Craftsman Crate: Hands-on Skills for Teens {Review}

Boys can be challenging to raise.  Even as a baby, our son has been constantly on the go and always wanting more - more adventure, more action, more building stuff....and since hitting the teens years, more food!  I love the encouragement I received a few years ago from reading Hal and Melanie Young's book, Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching, and Appreciating Boys.  I learned that my boy whom we affectionately referred to as, "Noise with Dirt on It", was a completely normal boy and we gained some wonderful insight on how to raise him to follow the plan God has for him as he grows into a man.  

After reading their book, I signed up to receive Hal and Melanie's email newsletter and it was through this newsletter that I learned about their new subscription kits for teens called Craftsman Crate.  This isn't like any other subscription kit I've ever seen.  It isn't just building a little model with cardboard.  This one teaches real hands-on artisan skills and it is designed specifically with teens in mind.  Of course, Nicholas was excited help me review this product for you so keep reading!

Nicholas was thrilled to see that he received a wood burning crate.  Wood burning is also known as pyrography which means "fire writing" and since Nicholas loves learning about fire he was anxious to dive into the kit.  

The kit came in a nice wooden box and included everything he needed to create several wood burning projects...which means Mom didn't have to make a run to the craft store - yay!  The Wood Burning Crate comes with a wood burning tool, different tips, practice wood, a wooden plaque to decorate, carbon paper, and a sheet of designs that could be transferred to the wood for a pattern to burn.  Of course, the wooden box it arrived in can also be decorated with wood burning as well.

The kit includes basic instructions on how to use everything but there were no detailed lesson plans that walk you step-by-step through a particular project.  Some people might be disappointed to hear that but my son dislikes those kind of kits.  He is an independent learner so he loved being able to just plug in the tool and go.  He used the test wood to experiment with the different tips and he improved his skills as he went along.

Nicholas made this piece just for me and decorated it with flowers!  He knows how to melt his mama's heart! ❤ He said he drew the flowers on the board with a pencil so he could erase any mistakes before he started burning.

He drew those flowers freehand but the kit includes some patterns and carbon paper that you can use to transfer designs to the wood for burning.  

Nicholas plays ice hockey and we love to watch the Dallas Stars NHL hockey team so it was no surprise to me that he wanted to burn the Dallas Stars logo on his plaque.  He found their logo online, copied it into a word processing document where he easily resized it to fit his wooden plaque.  He printed it and cut away some of the extra paper.  He placed the carbon paper under the logo and then pressed with a pencil around the edges of the logo.  This transferred the design through the carbon paper onto the wood.

He then used the wood burning tool with different tips to create the finished logo on the plaque.  He had so much fun with this project and he is looking forward to continuing to improve his skills.

I am really impressed with the Craftsman Crate subscription.  The kits include everything needed for the project and they introduce fun skills that teens might not normally have any exposure to otherwise.  For example, some of the other kits include chain mail and wood carving!  A new kit arrives each month and there is no long term commitment so you can cancel the subscription at any time.  The subscription costs just $39.97/month which includes the cost for shipping.

For more information, please check out the Craftsman Crate website. 

Disclaimer: We received one Craftsman Crate for free for the purpose of this review.  This review is entirely our own opinion.  We were under no obligation to say anything in particular about this product.  We do not make any commission if you purchase this product.  We just really like these kits and wanted to share it with you.

Christmas Traditions: Gingerbread Houses

We have a few Christmas traditions in our home.  One of them is decorating gingerbread houses.  I usually buy the pre-made houses and some extra candies to go on them.  Sometimes the kids have decorated their houses at their grandparents' house in Louisiana.  This year they decorated them with friends.  I think this is their favorite way to hold the tradition.

I bought houses that were not only pre-made but also pre-assembled.  Easiest thing ever!  Just take off the cellophane wrapper and start decorating.  Several other kids had pre-made pieces but they were supposed to assemble them with icing.  Well, if you've ever done that then you know it is time consuming and tries your patience.  And then it all collapses in a mound of disappointment.  But my friends are so creative.  They took the kids' pieces and stuck them together with hot glue.  Not as edible as the traditional way but much more efficient!  You go, girls!

And these days, you don't have to just buy a gingerbread house.  No.  Now they have gingerbread barns, movie-themed gingerbread houses, gingerbread, Christmas trees, and even gingerbread trains!

They also had graham crackers and other cookies and candies in case friends wanted to just make their own crazy creations.

Nicholas assessed his house and the candy options and then decided on the best way to proceed.  He often takes his time with decorating gingerbread houses.  Last year, he enjoyed some crazy decorating for his house to make it look like a monster!

But this year he said he wasn't going to make a monster or anything crazy.  He just wanted to decorate it like a house.

While the boys were outside decorating their houses, the girls were inside decorating theirs.  

Gingerbread house decorating is serious business for these girls!

After decorating, everyone enjoyed pizza and fellowship with friends.

Finally, the kids had fun with an ornament exchange.  Everyone brings a wrapped Christmas ornament and they play a white elephant game to see which one each child gets to keep.

Nicholas ended up with a silly dog with a bow.  

Rachel was even less excited than Nicholas because her ornament was Superman.  And no, Nicholas did not want to trade with her.  He is a Batman fan all the way so he didn't want anything to do with Superman.  Silly kids!

What are some Christmas traditions in your family?

Super Beads by Zirrly {Review}

Rachel is very creative and she loves making arts and crafts projects.  She especially loves trying new products so she was excited to try Super Beads from Zirrly to write this review for the Homeschool Review Crew.

Super Beads are a fun invention that allows children to  For the purpose of this review, my daughter and I used the Super Beads Mega Pack.
The Mega Pack comes with a whopping 4500 colorful plastic beads.  The kit also includes 4 pegged plastic trays that can be interconnected to make larger trays.  There are lots of paper pattern cards so up to four children can create a work of art at the same time.  There are also two spray bottles to fill with water and, of course, instructions on how to create a masterpiece.

To begin, Rachel chose the cupcake pattern card.  She then popped the pattern card on to the back of the plastic tray.

Next was the fun part!  She picked out the colors of beads that she wanted to use and started placing them on the pegs over the pattern card.

Once she had the pattern covered with colorful beads she grabbed the spray bottle and lightly spritzed her cupcake with water.

She struggled with waiting but she did manage to wait a few hours to pull her cupcake off of the plastic board.  She had to take her time and go slowly but it all came off in one piece.  

Next she got creative.  She put two of the plastic boards together and made her own creation that covered both boards.

Rachel was fascinated with how easy these projects were to make.  She has used similar bead products that she had to wait for me to iron because those beads only stuck together by being melted.  But Zirrly Super Beads are so easy to use that even young children can finish their creations on their own because no ironing is needed - just a light spray of water!

Rachel made several of the creations from the paper pattern cards but she also made a flower, toothbrush, and cherries.

The cherries turned out especially nice because Rachel made them three-dimensional!  She created the first layer of beads then once they were dry she spritzed the red beads and added a few more red beads on top to make the sweet cherries really pop out!  What a fun idea!

Rachel is 9 and was able to make all of these creations on her own.  However, she did have to be especially careful when removing them from the peg boards because they would sometimes try to break apart if she went too quickly, especially where the beads were just one row wide.  So my only comment about this would be that younger children might need some help from an adult to remove the project carefully enough that nothing breaks apart. 

The Super Beads Mega Pack that we received sells for $18.98.  We would highly recommend Super Beads for all kinds of fun craft and homeschool projects.  Rachel has already been talking about how to use Super Beads in our homeschool work.  She has been learning about human anatomy and she wants to make a Super Bead picture of the inside of a human cell complete with nucleus, mitochondria, and  Golgi bodies.

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A Few Pics from our Living Education Co-op

Our Living Education co-op is based on the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education.  Miss Mason was a British educator in the early 1900's.  She believed that education needed to focus on the whole child, not just their mind...."Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."  She believed in giving children a feast of living books, thoughts, and ideas and not just have them memorize a bunch of facts.  There is so much more to the Charlotte Mason method but it would require a whole series of posts to cover it all.

Our co-op is made up of other homeschool families.  We meet every other week at a local church.  Moms teach the classes and some of the classes include choir, art, handicrafts, Spanish, theater, Shakespeare, public speaking, composer study, artist study, and nature study - all of those wonderful enrichment classes that I never have time to cover with my children.  We have students from preschool up through high school.  I teach Nature Study at the end of the day but I am also a "room mom" for the 1st - 3rd graders so I stay with them all day to make sure they get to their next class, manage any overly chatty kids, and essentially help out their teachers any way that I can.  I don't see much of Nicholas during the day except at choir and lunch time when we are all together.

This week in Handicrafts, Rachel started a string art project.  The teacher provided everyone with a board, a hammer, nails, and a clothespin.  The children used stencils to mark a pattern on their boards.

Then she began hammering the nails into the board along the lines.  We found that hammering on the tables was quite loud.  Because the tables are plastic they absorbed a lot of the energy from each stroke of the hammer which unfortunately took away some of the energy needed to get the nail to go in.  We decided to move to the floor for our hammering, much to the chagrin of the church workers below us on the first floor!

I love that the teacher thought to include a clothespin so the children could use that to hold their nail and keep their little fingers from getting smashed if they missed the nail.

In nature study this week I took them out to the creek by the church for the first time.  They loved it!

It has been cold and although it was warmer today Rachel found a thin sheet of ice on top of the water which she carefully picked up to show everyone.

She posed with it quickly then threw it as hard as she could into the creek to watch it shatter.  The kids loved that and promptly looked around and found other sheets of ice to play with.

The kids found ice, bugs, and lots of shells.  They enjoyed showing others what they found as they explored.

The children have nature journals and for each nature walk I encourage them to sketch at least one interesting thing they find in nature.  But this time they were having so much fun climbing and jumping around on the rocks that no nature journals made it out of their backpacks.  And that's ok.  We all had a great time.

Gingerbread Houses

I'm just now going through some of pictures from last month because we had a rough bout with various illnesses among us over a few weeks around Christmas.

I love having the kids decorate Gingerbread house.  I just hate building the houses because the walls NEVER stay up and it is no fun to decorate a falling house.  This year I found 2 kits at WalMart that had the houses already built!  Yay for me!  The kits included a lot of colorful candies and some icing but I bought a few extra things for the kids to have fun with, especially these adorable Christmas gummies!

When the kids decorate their gingerbread houses, I always set out plenty of supplies for them and then I step back.  It can be tempting to get in there with them and try to help direct where to place each candy to make the best looking house.  But there is something bigger going on here.  It isn't about the final product.  It is about the process.  They get to design it however they want.  

I encourage them to experiment and try silly things and see what happens.  They have so much more fun with it that way, even if the house doesn't end up looking like something from Pinterest.

Even if they choose to decorate their house to look like some kind of Christmas monster!  

Wait a minute!  What is that blond hair above my son's lip?!  He's 13 years old and he's been saying he "has a mustache" but I haven't been able to see it until just now with the light reflecting off of that peach fuzz!  Savor the days because our sweet babies grow up too fast!

This sweet one is so proud of her gingerbread house.  She wouldn't have been nearly as proud if I had jumped in and helped her make the "perfect" house. 

This was all about full creativity for them.  I loved watching them have fun and I love both of their creations!

Make Kids Crafts Fun with Rigid Wrap and CelluClay Quik-Sculpting Kit {Review}

We love making crafts in our home.  We make crafts for fun and we use them regularly during our homeschool studies to bring what we've learned to life.  Here's my take on crafts and homeschool: You can simply read a book about the Spartans and move on or you can read about them, build your own Spartan helmet and sword, and then have pretend Spartan battles with your friends.  Which way do you think children will remember more about their studies of Sparta?



I saw that the Homeschool Review Crew had an opportunity to review the Rigid Wrap and CelluClay Quik-Sculpting Kit by ACTIVA Products.  I'm always trying to learn new ways to craft so I was excited to sign up for this review.  We've now had a chance to play around with with both products and they are amazing!  I can't wait to tell you more about them.

First, I downloaded the FREE eBook of ACTÍVA's Favorite Sculpture Kids Crafts.  It contains 12 simple projects to make with Rigid Wrap and CelluClay.  Then our kit arrived in the mail!  Included in the box is 2 rolls of Rigid Wrap, 1 bag of CelluClay, and a project sheet.

We started with the Rigid Wrap.  I wasn't sure what to expect because I had never of this product before. The packaging says it is plaster cloth and you can create amazing shapes in under 30 minutes.  Sounds great!

The kit came with 2 rolls of Rigid Wrap.  Each roll is 4 inches wide and 5 yards long.  Rigid Wrap is like having paper mache embedded in a roll of gauze but it is dry and ready to use.  It is really an interesting concept.

We cut strips of Rigid Wrap ahead of time.  To activate it, simply dunk it in water then rub it with your fingers until it is soft and creamy white.

Rachel wanted to make a bowl so I used plastic wrap to cover and protect one of our dinner bowls and she used that as her mold.  She just wrapped the strips of wet Rigid Wrap over the bowl and smoothed them out.

Once she had covered the inside and outside of the bowl, she set it aside to dry.

Next Rachel wanted to use the Rigid Wrap to make her own beads.  There are instructions for making several different shaped beads but the concept is pretty much the same.

To make the beads, you use a narrow strip of activated Rigid Wrap and fold it in half lengthwise.  Next you wrap the strip around a drinking straw and let it dry.  Rachel had fun making these!

Once they were dry, we got out the paints.  Rachel painted two Rigid Wrap bowls and lots of beads.

She had fun making and painting the beads. She said she was going to make a necklace and a charm bracelet with them. 

Rigid Wrap is a neat product.  It is like using paper mache but you don't have to measure out the mixture and it is actually much neater than regular paper mache.  

Next we got out the CelluClay to play with.  The kit comes with an 8 ounce bag and it is like instant paper mache.  The picture on the left is the dry CelluClay and the picture on the right is CelluClay activated with water.  

Rachel used the CelluClay to make some little polka dots for her Rigid Wrap bowl.  She just molded them in her hands and then pressed them on the bowl.

Once it was all dry, she painted it with a rainbow theme!

Next Rachel wanted to use cookie cutters as a mold for the CelluClay.  She placed a cookie cutter on the table and then pressed the CelluClay into the shapes to form a thin layer.  For the heart, she used a wooden skewer to press into it to make a hole for threading.  Once they were dry, she just removed the cookie cutters and she had some cute shapes.

CelluClay is a little like used clay to mold and shape creations but it dries very quickly and the finished products are not heavy like clay.  Rachel used the Rigid Wrap beads with the CelluClay heart to make this pretty necklace for me.  It is a very lightweight necklace. I would not have wanted to wear this if it had been made out of heavy clay.

She also decided to add some bling to some of the other cookie cutters creations.

Since it is summer and we are not working on school, we just experimented and had some fun with Rigid Wrap and CelluClay.  However, once we get back into our homeschool routine, I definitely plan to use these two products in our school activities.  They are perfect for projects in which you might usually use paper mache or clay but they are neater, dry very quickly, and lighter.  Two projects I'm already thinking of is to make models of different Native American homes as we study Indians on the frontier as well as forming electrons to make models of atoms and molecules for chemistry.  I can also see this will be great to use at the kids' theater when I need to make a prop for a play.  We really love these two products and highly recommend them.  

For more information about these products, please check out ACTIVA Products online:

Website: https://activaproducts.com/
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