This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Dollar General for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

School is officially back in session for most of us now, and at our house we are back in full swing with homeschool.  I get many emails on what curriculum we use or how we homeschool in general, so today I thought I’d share a few projects we did this week.  My goal was to find two craft projects to incorporate with history and science.  With any school project it always means supplies are needed, so we made a quick trip to our closest Dollar General (which is in reality the closest store period).  If you aren’t a normal Dollar General shopper, I would encourage you to head in and at least see what your store offers.  For me I can get everything we need and save so much time over heading to a big box store.  Plus now when we go the cashier wants to know what we’re making!!

For a little background, my biggest challenge with multiple ages is keeping everyone interested without losing my kindergartner.  We use the “one room” approach, meaning that everyone is learning the same thing at the same time, just maybe a little less in-depth for younger ages.

Learning the Food Chain – cost $1

Right now we are learning about the classifications of animals and the food chain in science. Our first project was to make a game to help them think through the food chain and what different animals eat.  We needed white cups with a lip (Styrofoam is the best for this).  We already had a big book of animal stickers, though you could even have them draw their own animals on paper and cut them out.  Each kid was given 5 cups and told to try to make a food chain 5 animals long.  I had to help my 5 year old think through her animals, but she caught on pretty quick.

They will put the sticker on the mid section of the cup and then write the animals name on the lip on the cup.  That way as the cups are stacked you can see the entire food chain together.  It’s simple, but they LOVED it.  They ended up making a second chain on the back side of the cup and then quizzing each other to see if they could figure out their chains.

Making a Castle – cost $3.50

In history this week it’s the start of the feudal system during the Medieval age.  That calls for a castle.  While this project doesn’t really teach them anything about history, for my girls art is a required subject.  So this is how art fits in… it goes with another subject.

To make a castle we needed tissue paper, glue and paint.  We already had watercolors from a past Dollar General trip, so I grabbed glue and tissue paper.  Total cost $3.50.  I got 3 different colors of tissue paper, which was way more than we needed for this project, but I know we’ll use it for gifts or other crafts.

We used two cups from our first project to make towers, and used a box that we had lying around.  I had the girls mark on the box with a marker where they wanted the top battlements and windows, then I did the cutting.  After cutting we painted and attached our towers.  After the paint was dry we glued in the tissue paper to make our windows.

Now the castle is inhabited by small lego men and women and even has horses and a moat.  I think at the day goes on the castle will continue to grow.

In the end we had two fun projects that got us away from busy work and using our hands.  Total cost $4.50.  Personally I loved that everything we needed was $1 or less!  Now I’m off to think up plans for next weeks crafts.