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Make Zopf (Swiss Style Bread): Day 3 Hands-on Learning

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Make Zoph. Swiss style bread. Day 3 of Hands-on Learning Activities @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool PlusFor another switch in our routine, we read Cuckoo Clock Secrets in Switzerland (Case of Adventure Travel Series Book 1) and have been working our way through a fun and interactive Unit Study called Destination Switzerland by CASE OF ADVENTURE. Today, we made  Zopf (Swiss Style Bread) and you talk about delicious!

We basically followed the recipe suggested by Case Adventure, which is Zopf Bread. It required just a few ingredients and a slow morning while we did school.

Though the recipe suggested white flour, I had more whole wheat. And even though we didn’t get the combination right of white to wheat so that it didn’t become too crumbly without the gluten, it still was so delicious and a fun project.

After Tiny mixed it, we let double in size for about an hour. I think it was longer because he was doing math and we forgot about it. So I think it was closer to two hours.

Then he decided to go ahead and try the four braids instead of two and talk about challenging.

I’m not much help to Tiny because the poor kid has a spatially challenged mom (you know I have to turn the map sideways or the direction I’m facing to get it right), but he found a site that showed him how to braid 4 pieces.

Actually the Step 2 on the Instructables website was what he used because it was more helpful. So much fun for him as he loved the challenge.

The important part was to try to make the pieces even, but so not perfect is perfectly acceptable.

As you can see, he was pretty proud of himself and he should be because it was so delicious and the smell in the kitchen just permeated.

Again, it was crumbly because of the lack of white flour, but it didn’t affect the taste any.

Besides having a hot piece of buttered bread while reading the novel Cuckoo Clock Secrets in Switzerland (Case of Adventure Travel Series Book 1) and putting together our new lapbook and unit study about Switzerland was more fun this way.

I have a review and pictures about it coming up soon on our newest Switzerland unit study. But you can grab it now if you’re wanting to follow along.

Destination Switzerland CASE OF ADVENTUREAlso, grab these other hands-on ideas from Day 1: Make a Hair Hygrometer, Day 2: Desert Sand Art: Hands-on Learning (Colors of the Desert) and 365 Days Hands-On Homeschool Activities – One for EVERY Day of the Year for more ideas and look at my category for hands-on ideas for your unit studies

Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

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Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


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Desert Sand Art: Day 2 Hands-on Learning (Colors of the Desert)

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Doing sand art gave us a huge appreciation and admiration for those doing professional sand art because it’s not as easy to work with as it looks.

Have fun with sand art for studying about the desert. Day 2 of Hands-on Learning Activities. @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool PlusContinuing on with our hands-on learning activities adventure, we did what we thought was going to be an easy art lesson, which is to study and learn about the colors of the desert. Well that part was easy, but we got so tickled doing this easy art activity that we laughed most of the morning.

Look at the supplies Tiny gathered up to do this activity.

►box or two of salt. I normally have a box or two of cheap Morton salt stored.
►food coloring. I have the basic colors and some neon ones too.
►several ziploc bags
►sandpaper. I used the small sheets we had, but this could be done on bigger sheets. I just used what we had, so I didn’t have to haul in anymore stuff to my house. But, the bigger pieces of paper would look fantastic for this lesson.
►pencil for light sketching and drawing, several paint brushes and plain Elmer’s liquid glue
►tempera paint for the colors of the desert

Instead of buying sand, we made it cheaply by combining just two ingredients, which are salt and food coloring.

Depending on how deep you want your color, you can add up to 8 drops or as few as 4 or less. We made several different colors and shades and put each color in a ziploc bag. We did this the night before, so it had time to dry.

Simply mix salt and food dye to make desert sand.

Lay out your bags flat on the kitchen counter or in a hot area like the garage so the salt can dry.

The next morning, we had a bag or two still damp, but we proceeded forth. We’re not very patient people. If we had placed the baggies in the garage, they would have dried faster since the kitchen counter was a bit cool.

Next, we lightly sketched out some desert scenes on the sand paper.

You want simple lines and not complicated detailed ones to keep this easy if you use more of the sand than the paint.  Or, at least that is what we experienced. If you want to use equal parts paint and sand, then choose a more detailed scene.

We found a couple of desert scenes we like on the internet and sketched them out quickly. Then we applied liquid glue on the areas we wanted sand.

Chose a color, snipped a corner of the baggie and poured the sand over the area. It is hard to keep the colors separated and it gave us a real appreciation for the detailed work required on professional sand art.
Add some paint to your scenes and remember since you’re using sand paper, it’s a natural textured background for the areas you want to leave blank.

We had a huge mess today between some of the wet dye and paint and trying to get the right colors in the right spots, but we had a ton of fun as we read more about the desert.

Hope your kids like this as much as we liked getting messy!

Grab Day 1: Make a Hair Hygrometer here, look at 365 Days Hands-On Homeschool Activities – One for EVERY Day of the Year for more ideas and look at my category for hands-on ideas for your unit studies.


Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

Make a Hygrometer: Day 1 Hands-on Learning (Humidity in the Desert)

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Make a Hygrometer. Day 1 of Hands-on Learning Activities. Learn how humidity in the desert is measured @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool PlusTaking a break from the books because we need a variation in our routine with everything going on right now, we are doing several days of hands-on learning with some upcoming unit studies. Today, we are learning about how humidity is measured in a desert, so we made an easy diy hair hygrometer.

Look at this list of supplies that you probably have on hand too at your house.

►Cardboard about a foot long and 9 inches wide
►A piece of thin cardboard. Ours was a bit too thick, you really want it thin here to make the pointer.
►A pair of scissors
►A strand of hair that’s one foot long
►A hot glue gun
►push pin
►dime
►pen for marking
►small cloth tape measure or regular tape measure

Make an Easy DIY Hair Hygrometer

Hygro comes from a Greek word that means moisture or wet and a hygrometer is a way to measure the humidity in the air.

An easy diy hair hygrometer is a great way to see a visual and learn how the humidity is measured in a desert because everybody understands a bad hair day. And hair behaves differently when the humidity is high or low.

This is the objective of this activity; when it’s humid, hair increases in length and when the air is dry, hair will shorten.

Look at this site where we got this idea from. It says:

Hair is made from keratin, a protein that is wound into a coil. The turns of the coil are held together by a type of chemical bond called a hydrogen bond. Hydrogen bonds break in the presence of water, allowing the coil to stretch and the hair to lengthen. The bonds re-form when the hair dries, which allows people to style their hair simply by wetting it, shaping it, then drying it.

Here is what we did.

1. Take the bigger piece of cardboard (called base) and cut two slits in the top about one inch from the left and separate the two slits about 1/4 inch.

2. Take the thin piece of cardboard and make a triangle pointer about 6 inches long. Then measure about half way down the base and over from the left about one inch. Attach the pointer there with a pushpin.

3. Take the hair strand, (I put some hot glue on one end at the top to keep it from coming out of the slit, slippery little sucker) and string it through both the top and bottom slits. Glue a dab of hot glue in place on top to hold the strand and a dab at the bottom to hold it.

And if all this sound like blah, blah, blah. Look at this picture.

How to make an easy diy hygrometer to learn about moisture

Attach the pointer to the base with a pushpin 1/2 inch from the left edge in the center. Take your time so your hair doesn’t break. Too, this works with healthy hair. If it is brittle, you won’t be able to pull it carefully taunt.
4. Hot glue the hair in place in both sets of slits, then hot glue a dime 1 -1/2 inches from the left edge of the pointer base.

Next, Tiny took it to the shower.

While he was showering, as you can see in the picture above, the hair lengthened because of the humidity and the pointer went down. That was humid or 100% humidity if you want to calibrate and use it to make other measurements for the day.

Your kid can take this outside during different parts of the day to see what it does and measure the pointer by marking it on the base for different times of the day. Record the time to see how humidity changes during the day.

Just remember, use a THIN piece of cardboard for the pointer because Tiny had to take an extra long shower because our pointer was heavy. He didn’t mind doing that this morning though.

Anyway, if your child takes it out during different parts of the day, he can calibrate where it points and learn how much moisture is in the air.

To hurry the process on along though, we got a blow dryer after it and the hair coiled and the pointer came back up to dry. This helps to understand humidity in the morning versus humidity in the afternoon.

Humidity is one way to describe how much water vapor is in the air and the hair hygrometer was such an accurate way to measure water vapor that it was used for many years.

Relating this to the Sonoran Desert, we learned that during the hottest, driest parts of the year in the Sonoran Desert the humidity may be around 15%. In other non-desert locations the humidity may be 80% or more.

Though we know deserts are very dry places, this really helped us to see why they are.

Also, look at my blog post, 365 Days Hands-On Homeschool Activities – One for EVERY Day of the Year for more ideas and look at my category for hands-on ideas for your unit studies.


Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

24 Borderline Genius Ways To Relieve Language Arts Boredom

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It can be challenging to add fun to homeschool subjects that can become stale and boring, like language arts. After all, how can you possibly jazz up phonics?

Today, I’m sharing 24 borderline genius ways to relieve language arts boredom.

24 Borderline Genius Ways to Relieve Language Arts Boredom @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Sparking a Love for Language

Too, some of these tips can be used across multiple ages and other ideas will apply to only certain ages, but it will get your creative juices flowing.

  • Try a scavenger hunt. This was a life saver for me while teaching my middle son phonics and sight words. And it doesn’t take long to set up. Use index cards, flashcards  or sticky notes and hide them around the house.
  • Send cards to grandma. For reluctant writers, sending a card to grandma or to extended family gives his writing a sense of purpose. 
  • Find a pen pal. A pen pal encourages a budding writer and other kids are not so judgmental of writing; it gives the novice writer a place to express his creative outlet whether it’s Lego playing, paper engineering or coding.
  • Learn phonics, through nuts and bolts, make a tube, use letter cubes, create flip books, dig for them, rhyme it, make a phonics phone, an I spy game, make clip cards,  and make an ant mobile.
  • Go Fish.  By grabbing more than one card deck, I wrote on the card and then the boys played together matching up sight words. Simple.
  • Bingo. A fun way to learn letters, phonics, grammar and sight words.

More Language Arts Activities

  • Add magnetic letters or puzzles to the refrigerator. My boys loved to stand and learn and the refrigerator was the perfect pallet.
  • Scrabble, Jr. And my boys never tired of games that were fun.
  • Combine P.E/phonics. Though I never recommend jumping off furniture in the house, it was the only way I could get one son to recite the vowels and sight words. He would jump off the couch and clap. Of course, this can be done outside when the weather is good, but at the time he was learning, it was pretty cold outside. So we did P.E. inside.

  • Go see a Shakespeare play. The local college in our area hosted several plays throughout the year and it was a fun way for my boys to learn about subjects they initially found boring like Shakespeare.
  • Make up a funny story. I would have the boys narrate back to me a silly story using the sight words or phonics word they were using. The sillier the better.
  • Vocaroo. Your kids will love recording their voices so they can write back what they recorded.
  • Mad Libs. They are always a hit in our home and anytime we could move away from a textbook or workbook to do a mad lib story, we did.
  • Do crossword puzzles to learn spelling. Lists are a great way to learn spelling but crossword puzzles breathe life into learning spelling.

  • A real audience counts for writing. Writers of any level are inspired when they have a breathing human being on the other end reading their creative expression. From elementary to high school writers, they can start a blog or enter creative writing contests.
  • Have your kids keep a journal of words or phrases they find amusing. The first time my kids heard me use the phrase come-uppins or come-uppance they said it all day long. I never dreamed it was so comical, but apparently it is. They added it to their journal.
  • Turn a book into a unit study. Look at a unit study about Charlotte’s Web.
  • I love this idea of using matchbooks to do chapter summaries in a novel.

Though it may seem that only science, history and art are easier to bring to life, language arts is the glue that bind the other subjects.

Teach language arts in a way that makes reading, spelling, phonics and even poetry a delight because when a child can read and write well, he nourishes his mind for a lifetime. What a gift!


Grab some other tips. How To Teach Your Homeschooled Children Shakespeare, Shakespeare Unit Study Starters and Free Middle and High School Homeschool Language Arts.

Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

Pioneer Living and Cloth Dyeing (Hands-on History)

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

If you’re learning about pioneer living or westward expansion, you’ll love this cloth dyeing hands-on history activity. Also, look at my BEST Westward Ho Unit Study and Lapbook.

I wanted to focus on a science activity that pioneers living during that time would do, which is cloth dyeing.

Pioneer Living and Cloth Dyeing (Hands-on History)

Pioneer living and cloth dyeing go hand in hand though I’m sure pioneers of that time weren’t too concerned about many different colors in their clothes.

They normally just had a few pieces of clothing.

However, when they did want color, they knew a lot about nature and how to get the colors they wanted.

Pioneer Living | Hands-on History

Pioneers and Native Americans living on the frontier knew about insects, flowers and vegetables that could be cooked up and used for color.

This method of dyeing cloths has been used from ancient civilizations down to modern times.

In our Ancient Civilization unit study (studying Pirates) we learned about how Phoenicians used a shellfish, called a Murex to make purple dye.

The name Phoenician comes from a Greek word that means purple men. Purple has come to symbolize wealth, royalty and high office.

Pioneer Living and Cloth Dyeing (Hands-on History)

Also, though when we lived in South America, we learned about natural dyeing when we took a family field trip to a family owned weaving and dyeing business.

It is always a fascinating project to learn about and we thought we would try it again with some things we had in our refrigerator and one or two things we bought (I can’t stand beets – yuck) to experiment with.

Pioneer Living and Cloth Dyeing (Hands-on History)

Look at what we gathered up.

  • Walnuts. Since we’ve done this before, we wanted to experiment with a different color than black from the opened hull. So we added whole walnuts to some cracked hulls and got a really pretty golden color.
  • Kale. This was the first time for this and we loved the lighter color and wonder what we could have added to make it brighter or maybe boiled it longer.
  • Onion skins. We used a red onion because we had them and it made an orange-ish color.
  • Beets. We loved the lighter color.
  • Blackberries. We added salt and vinegar to it to get a more vibrant color.
  • Old or new diaper. Clean of course (wink). We used an old one to cut up into blocks for fabric swatches.
Pioneer Living and Cloth Dyeing (Hands-on History)

Then we added water to four pots or pans and brought it to a boil.

After it boiled, we turned the burner down and let it simmer for about an hour on real low.

More Pioneer Living Crafts

Pioneer Living and Cloth Dyeing (Hands-on History)

We’re thinking, the longer it simmers, the darker the color after we read about how Native Americans did it.

Then we soaked the cotton fabric in the solution overnight.

There is no limit to natural materials you can use to explore and have fun with. We really had a lot of fun with this.

Pioneer Living and Cloth Dyeing (Hands-on History)

And, we found inspiration from this post on Pioneer Thinking: Making Natural Dyes from Plants, which categorizes colors by natural material to use. It is a great post to get some ideas and tips from.

Too, you may want to check out my post that goes great with this unit study, which is How To Make An Easy Ink pot & Quill Pen with Berry Ink.

I think all of your kids will love this activity and especially if you let them pick out the flowers, nuts and vegetables they want to use and do some color mixing too.

This is such a great open ended exploration activity to include all ages.

Hands-on History. Cloth dyeing has been used since ancient civilization through to frontier living @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


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