Wizard of Oz

My sister-in-law who is also homeschooling was coming down to visit last weekend, so I was trying to decide what we should do for a field trip. I remembered Home Depot does a kids' workshop the first Saturday of the month, so I looked into it and the project was going to be a Wizard of Oz birdhouse. I thought that sounded like fun and like a good culminating project to learning about The Wizard of Oz. We started by trying to listen to the audio book, but the kids weren't too interested at first, so I ditched that idea and starting reading them The Great Illustrated Classic version of the story. They loved it and we read it all in three days. I also found a great website with Wizard of Oz printables (and lots of other great printables as well). We did a Wizard of Oz puzzle, made Wizard of Oz puppets, and played a fun graphing game where they rolled a die with all the characters on it and graphed who they got and saw who got to ten first (I think it was Glinda). We also made emerald glasses. I got the idea on Pintrest and here is the link In the book, everyone has to wear Emerald glasses in the city. Oz tells them it is because it is so bright and will hurt their eyes, but in reality it is because he wants everything to look green and spectacular (but it isn't really).

We always have a pizza and movie night on Fridays, so we watched the movie with everyone on Friday night. When we got to Home Depot Saturday morning, they said they had just given away their last birdhouse, but they had another project. Thomas was crushed. Luckily, Cynthia got there before us and little Daniel didn't mind trading his birdhouse for a ride-on lawnmower. The crisis was averted and we had a lot of fun. After we had done all these things and Thomas knew the story well, he started listening to the real audiobook on the Kindle. He listened to it at least twice. The kids have decided to all be Wizard of Oz characters for Halloween. Stuart's favorite is the lion (and we already have a lion costume that fits him

), Thomas likes the scarecrow, and Heidi will be Dorothy. The parents are still debating, but they want daddy to be the tin man and mommy to be Glinda (but I don't know if they make maternity Glinda dresses).