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Make Your Own Mosquito Repellent Candles

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It is the season for insects to be out full force and while I seem to have some natural immunity to getting eaten alive, my children do not.

David Fisher, the candle-making expert on About.com has some good recipes and ideas on how to make citronella candles. He also includes other suggested essential oils such as clove, cedarwood, lavender, eucalyptus, peppermint, rosemary and lemongrass. Check out his mosquito repelling essential oil blend recipes.

There are also lotions that contain some of these essential oils that you can apply to your skin for double duty because candles will only scare them off for so long. Peppermint, citronella and lavender smell pleasant enough to wear, yet mosquitoes detest the taste and smell of them.

Some also make their own spray with a few drops of essential oil in alcohol. That doesn’t sound too gentle for children’s skin, so I would opt for a lotion. Here’s a gentle recipe from Sunspirit Aromatherapy that’s suggested as an insect repellent, although I don’t know how effective it is as I haven’t tried it yet.
-1 drop Lavender oil
-10ml Jojoba oil

At Nospray.com (a coalition fighting against the spraying of toxins) cinnamon oil and catnip are touted to be safe alternatives to Deet. Cinnamon oil would certainly smell nice in a candle too.

With the arrival of the Japanese Encephalitis Mosquito, it has become important to make sure those pesky mosquitos are not snacking on you.  Japanese encephalitis symptoms include Headache, neck pain, and Nausea. .  Japanese encephalitis does have a vaccine and you should contact your local medical professional for information on obtaining this vaccination.

But how else can you protect yourself against mosquitos? Keep mosquitoes away from exposed skin by wearing long-sleeved shirts, long pants, and socks, you can even wear a mosquito net hat.  Tuck shirts into pants and pants into socks to cover gaps in your clothing where mosquitoes can get to your skin.  For a natural repellent use essential oils for making your own Mosquito bug spray repellent. Add oils to water and spray into the air or add small drops to your clothing.  Use a Necklace or Bracelet oil diffuser to help repel mosquitoes naturally.  Insect bracelets and necklaces are great for children too.

 

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Minecraft Learning Activities

If your kids have been into Minecraft for a while or are just getting into it because of the movie, now is a great time to add some Minecraft learning activities to your rotation.

There has been a lot written about using Minecraft in homeschool environments in particular and the things that kids can learn playing Minecraft such as using creative thinking, learning about rocks and minerals represented in the game, resource management and using modeling within the game to learn or show what they have learned.

You can also challenge kids to construct things within Minecraft with these challenge cards from The Canadian Homeschooler. Working on specific tasks emphasizes logic, reasoning, problem solving, creativity and coding skills.

And don’t miss the resources and challenges from Minecraft Education itself, which has ideas for learning about computer science, cyber safety, math and climate science among other things.

Of course you can also use Minecraft as a way to enhance learning outside of the game, and Homeschool Superfreak has a good list of ways to build on experiences in Minecraft for real life learning such as problem solving, teamwork, geography and architecture. Techie Homeschool Mom has tips for designing your own unit study around Minecraft.

Momgineer has a post on learning about world landmarks with Minecraft, and Teaching Math Literacy has a post for using the game to teach area and perimeter.

Years ago I shared this Minecraft multiplication game, as well as a set of lesson plans and activities with a Minecraft theme.

Pixel Paper Craft has a full printable Minecraft Monopoly game, where the spaces are resources and there are even change ideas to use. So fun!

1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1 has a good set of Minecraft worksheets for kindergarten, which includes math activities, reading, colors and more. You’ll find graphing and coin counting, phonics and rhyming words and color practice using Minecraft objects, to name a few.

Older kids might enjoy the Minecraft writing prompts from Write Shop.

Make a Minecraft themed Lego number line with this tutorial from Stir the Wonder. Add a die and make it a race to the finish as well as counting practice.

Rock Your Homeschool has printable Minecraft activity sheets that include a word search and scramble, maze, instructions for drawing a creeper, characters to color and more. There’s also one where you can draw your own Minecraft skin.

Rainbow Printables has tutorials for drawing Minecraft characters, and Rock Your Homeschool also has 10 color by letter pixel designs of Minecraft characters and creatures.