Anyone Know What Works Best on Sea Shells and Sea Stars?

Okay, Crafty bloggers...I need your help...

What works best for decorating sea shells and sea stars?

Paint?
Spray Paint?
Glitter Glue?
Spray adhesive with a dusting of glitter?
This year, we are doing a sea theme for Christmas...we are making Christmas ornaments out of sea shells...I am thinking of either painting them or else spraying them with glue adhesive and then, dusting them with pearly glitter so that there will be some consistency.

Has anyone ever painted shells?

How about sea stars?

What kind of paint did you use for such a project?

How about spray adhesive and then, glitter?

I want it to be something that my sons can help make, and that won't be toxic to the kids our dog.

I am worried about what is the best paint vs. what is the safest...when I have used kids' washable paints for projects in the past, they only seem to hold up if you laminate them and obviously, I can't laminate sea shells or sea stars.
Any thoughts, suggestions, etc. will be greatly appreciated.

Also, if you read this and you have a neat idea related to decorating for Christmas with a sea shore theme, I would love to hear from you, too:)

Cayman Islands - Boatswain's Beach and Turtle Farm

What fun! The beach is beautiful!
Little Bro up close and personal with some cool sea turtles!
Big Bro loved this turtle in particular. He was so fascinated by him.
Very neat to get to hold sea turtles.
Mommy and Little Bro having fun holding this cute turtle.

Zoo Photos - From the Boys' Perspective

All of these photos were taken by Big Bro and Little Bro...
Hourglass Tree Frog
Thai Leaf Frog
Strawberry Poison Dart Frog (so cute but so deadly!)
Burrowing Gopher Frog (so cool! First time he has ever been out for us to see him!)

More Cool Creatures of the Sea!

Some neat coral, sponges, and shrimp...
Big Bro and Little Bro by the awesome jellies display!

Neat looking Sea Stars!
Leafy Sea Horses!

Cool Sea Creatures From Our Aquarium Field Trip!

Cool Jellies!
Spider Crab!
Sea Horses!
Huge Sting Ray!
Cool Sea Stars!

Field Trip Friday - Big Bro and Little Bro Having Fun at the Aquarium!

The best part of the day was when Big bro turned and said " Mommy, I am so glad that we are homeschoolers! I love learning like this! This week has been awesome"!
Hands on learning...touching the sting rays you have been learning about all week...
Two finger gentle touches for the sea stars...
What fun!

A Happy Homeschooling Day

Great day for Little Bro! Went to co-op art class and painted another beautiful painting... worked on color mixing and using a variety of textures...sand, glitter, confetti are all in the paint mixture.

Daddy got home fairly early, so he helped Little Bro with his last work of the day, a new puzzle.

Little Bro finishing a sea life puzzle with Daddy.

Little Bro loved doing a little wooden color game.
Little Bro enjoyed feeding the sharks (adding beads to shark's mouth with spoon).
Little Bro also liked doing the knobless cylinders work.
As usual, Little Bro got right to it and started out doing his morning work in his pajamas.
This is the work he had chosen for himself the night before...also, one of his favorites, another stackable tower.
This one has numbers and items to count as you stack.

Selecting "first morning work" the night before REALLY works well for us!

If you are homeschooling and using the Montessori Method and Montessori inspired materials in your home, I encourage you to give this a try...makes a huge difference in setting the tone for the day.

Coins, Lemons, and Jellyfish...Oh My!

Big Bro woke up and got into his first work of the day, involving polishing coins.
Had read somewhere that you can polish pennies using lemons and salt paste, so we decided to give that a try for all of the coins...seemed to work well. First, Big Bro had to carefully slice a lemon into two halves. Then, he had to pour salt into a glass bowl. then, he added water and had to make a paste...it was more like a slurry, but it was the best consistency we could get...
then, he had to have a bowl for rinsing the coins and towels for drying and polishing.
I explained the process to him, but did not really do a presentation, because I have actually never done this before either, so it was a kind of trial and error thing...but it was a good experience.
Big Bro seemed to enjoy it, although he got tired after doing several cups of change. Out of curiosity, if anyone else uses this method, about how many coins do you suggest laying out for children?
We just had a huge barrel of coins, so the supply was never ending...but I think maybe it was a little bit overwhelming for him. He enjoyed it, but next time he chooses this work, I think I will lay out a small basket with a pre-determined number of coins for him.
After the coin polishing, he then did a coin matching and a coin identification work. We then did some sample money math problems together, with me reviewing the coins as he was working.

Little Bro chose to do some block play work with open, stackable blocks. These are cool, as if turned onto their sides, they stack up just like the pink tower. If you hold them upright, a child can choose to link them in a variety of ways to make all kinds of neat designs. Little Bro made (as he called them) "a castle, a cat with a bowl of milk, and a colorful pink tower with holes in it"...

Little Bro then wanted to paint. He painted some pictures and then, wanted to make a jellyfish. So, i helped him to round up some scraps that could work for a jellyfish...plastic freezer wrap, some string scraps, some paint, and some clear Tacky Glue.

Will post some photos tomorrow when everything is dried.

Paint and clear Tacky Glue are getting lots of use in our home. I may have to order a bulk amount of clear Tacky Glue.

Little Bro enjoyed making his paintings.
He then listened while Big Bro read to me.

Then, we cleaned up and were off to meet a new friend for a play date of sorts.

We had lunch with our new friend and his mom and then, we came home and the boys played with their wooden train set.

The last day of summer for us...tomorrow starts our official first day of school!

Sea Horses and other Cool Sea Creatures!

We had a nice day doing our work this morning...we read a great book, suggested by Laura from Playschool6, called Mister Seahorse, By Eric Carle.

The book tied in perfectly with our theme of sea life, but also, it is a great tie in about fathers and their roles with helping with the family.

Dear Hubby has been so supportive of our homeschooling adventure. He has also been taking a more active role in assisting our children with their work when he comes home from work.
Last night, he made a tornado bottle, as Big Bro has been very curious about tornadoes.
He also made some chocolate chip cookies and helped to go over the concept of simple fractions with Big Bro.

Dear Hubby reads a chapter to Big Bro every night at bedtime, but also takes the time out to read to Little Bro from time to time too.

As far as our work, Big Bro started out in his pj's and then, got changed a while into his work. Little Bro followed suit and did the same thing. They both chose to wear matching shirts today, which I must say I love when they do this, as if I had my way, I would still have them in matching or else coordinating clothes everyday...don't know why...think it is from my mom always having my sibs in coordinating or matching outfits.

Well, for work, Big Bro did some dry transfer work (one to many), some wet transfer work, some math with sea creature manipulatives, and some reading practice.

Little Bro did a wooden knobbed puzzle with labels for left and right and some counting activities with the puzzle. He then did some math counting using manipulatives and a number strip, 1 to 10.

He then made the counting activity into a sorting activity of sorts and selected counters that were all of the same species and then, all of the same color.

We also worked on preparing some things for our pen pals. Now, we are getting ready to go out to meet someone from one of homeschooling groups. We are looking forward to meeting our new friends.

Can't believe that we will officially be starting this Thursday!
Feel like we are pretty much in the groove, so hopefully, it will be a smooth transition:)

Little Bro's Day - Counting Sea Life, Reading and Singing Songs

Little Bro had a busy morning...as usual, he was up and at 'em this a.m. and got right into doing his sea life counting work. He used sea life manipulatives and organized his work by either placing the sea creatures to the right or to the left and then set them up pretty much like addition problems..."one here and none here gives you just one"..."none here and two here gives you two"...and so on.
He then had fun counting in English, then Spanish, and then French. 

He then wanted to listen to the Smithsonian Sea Life alphabet book on CD with headphones, but Big Bro wanted to also be able to hear it, so they went without headphones.
Little Bro listened to the songs and followed along in the book, although he occasionally got up to dance a little to the music...very sweet to see him doing this.
He loves music and sometime just can't help himself but to listen to the rhythm of his feet!
All of the music and reading made him in the mood to sing other songs.

We have been working on the Continents Song and the Days of the Week Song.

Little Bro also had a blast at IKEA with his buddies. He is so excited, as he is so close to being tall enough that they generally let him come into the playroom.

Both boys love climbing on the rock wall and jumping into the ball pit.
Since our IKEA here is so new, they seem to keep it exceptionally clean.

Makes for a fun, different sort of playdate. We all adore their wonderful chocolate mousse cake too. We split a piece three ways...delicious!

Big Bro's Sea Life Work & Reading Rods Work Short i

Big Bro is certainly getting into doing his work each morning.
I don't think that there will be much of a difference for him from what we have been doing for "summer" to what we will be doing for "school"...we officially start homeschooling on August 20th, so these last few weeks have just been a slow warm-up to our routine.

He and Little Bro have gotten into the swing of things and it is generally like clockwork in the morning.

Big Bro chose to do some Puzzle book work. He did a great job with a 48 piece puzzle.
Then, he went right into Reading Rods work - short i.
He is coming along nicely with his reading. Sometimes, though, when he comes to a word he does not know, he always sounds out the word with a long vowel sound first and then, if it sounds funny to him, he sounds it out with a short vowel sound.

This is the first time we have used Reading Rods.

Pros:
The Reading Rods program has many nice features: multi-sensory, uses color coded cubes for vowels / consonants, and has decent, mostly realistic stories for the different levels.
The pages in the books aren't too cluttered and the stories make some sense.

Cons:
The letter cubes are very tricky to get to snap together.
The letter cubes are hard plastic and make a great deal of noise when accidentally dropped.

Wrapped up the morning with listening to a Smithsonian Sea Life Alphabet book on CD and then, found all of the animals on the accompanying poster to the CD.

Then, a playdate at IKEA for the afternoon!
The boys had a great time with their buddies...and the mommies had fun, too:)

Big Bro's Coral Reef

At about the time Little Bro was wrapping up his first work of the morning, Big Bro decided to get going with his work...finally, after about twenty-five minutes later than Little Bro.

Had been sooooooo tempted to insist that he should get to it (find that it is more of a challenge sometimes to trust the process when it is my own child than when it is a student) but I held back and just hoped and prayed that what should happen would happen and that he would have the want to do it and then, he did...and boy, did he work!

Big Bro had selected to do some morning work from a seek and find sea life book.
He was fascinated by the Diving for Treasure page and the Coral Reef page, so he focused mostly on those his entire time.
He wanted cards to go along with the pages, so that he could better keep track of what he had found and could chart how many animals he had found.
Big Bro asked me if I would help him make some of the cards, so I did.
Since he is quickly becoming a voracious reader, Big Bro wanted to see all of the names of the sea creatures to learn them and to see if he could read all of them.

When Big Bro wrapped up his sea life seek and find work, he really wanted to make a coral reef
with either some paint or dough, as he wanted it to "be 3D and to look like a real coral reef."

Told Big Bro about some work that could look like coral, so he asked to see it.
We looked at Ms. Dyer's salt paintings on her lovely blog and then, Big Bro got busy...he mixed up some salt, some red and yellow paint, and then, he dipped some pipe cleaners into the paint.
( A big thanks to Ms. Dyer, as seeing your blog really made him want to use salt paint...he and I both love the work on your blog).

Big Bro wasn't sure as to how to affix the salt painted pipe cleaners to the paper.
First, he smeared the paper with the salt paint and laid the pipe cleaners on top...then, he decided to top it off with some Tacky Clear Gel.
Big Bro added some tissue paper scraps from yesterday and voila!
A coral reef!

While his reef work was drying, Big Bro decided to take his sea turtle he had created last night and wanted to add it to the reef.
He decided that it didn't look right, that the colors were too light on the turtle, so he got out some pastel chalks and did a wet brush painting of the chalk onto his turtle.
Turned out to be a very cool project.

We wrapped up our morning with some very informal, authentic assessments for math.

Have decided to keep several subject area journals to document Big Bro's progress, along with a portfolio, so that we will better be able to see his growth in all areas.

We love our work!

Here, Little Bro is working hard on his fish art project.
Little Bro was more free form in his placement and color selection for his fish scales.
For materials, both used parchment paper for the fish shape, tissue paper pieces and aluminum foil pieces for scales, and white paper with black marker for the eye.
The mouth was drawn on with marker. Everything was attached using glue sticks.
Big Bro is totally engrossed in doing his work, especially his artwork.
He went for a more orderly sort of placement of his tissue paper scales.
Big Bro carefully counted and organized his work.
Both boys loved making their fish.
After making their fish, we read several fish books they had selected at the library and at the bookstore.
Big Bro pulled a bunch of fish books, including several Rainbow Fish books out for us to read together.

After making fish artwork and reading fish books, Big Bro chose to do some math pattern work, followed by practical life.
Heread a Rainbow Fish Easy Reader for his reading work to me.
This was out of the norm though, as normally, he reads a selection from our reading program to me and then, does some Pink Series work.

Little Bro chose to do some Practical Life work.

Both are very happy and have really gotten into the homeschooling groove.

They enjoyed the morning so much that after dinner, they wanted to make more sea creatures. We used some of the leftover tissue paper scraps on color diffuser sea turtles and have left them out to dry overnight...hopefully, they will look kind of like tie dye sea turtles...we will see...

The one thing that is emerging is that both boys like to start their first work of the day at the kitchen table and then, progress into our playroom / workroom after that.
I have figured out that it is tied in with food, as they want to get started right away with their work but they also want to eat breakfast, so they can do both at the same place in the kitchen.

We keep adding on 15 minutes to our day so that it will be such a natural transition when we officially start next Thursday.