Archive for 699
stART: Jamie O’Rourke and Potato Printing
Posted by: | CommentsI wanted to share this week’s stART (story + art) project a little early, because it’s got a St. Patrick’s Day theme!
This morning, we read Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato, one of my kids’ favorite Tomie dePaola books. Jamie is one of the laziest men in all Ireland, and when his wife falls sick, he despairs – who will cook, and clean, and plant, and harvest, if not his wife? On his way to church to beg for help, he happens upon a leprechaun and catches him by the coattails. The clever leprechaun convinces Jamie to accept a seed for the world’s biggest potato in lieu of the pot of gold, and hilarity – and a giant pratie – ensue.
After we read the book, we made some potato print pictures.
The kids made me a whole table full of pictures!
I had the idea in mind, vaguely, that maybe they would want to recreate the story of the big potato, but they both had better ideas!
KarateKid made a series of Potato Aliens.
GoGoGirl did some stamping at first, hollering across the kitchen to where I was making home fries for brunch, “LOOK, MOM! I MADE A POTATO!” But, GoGoGirl being who she is, it wasn’t long before she was fingerpainting with a delicious gloppy mix of all the paint colors.
(for the record, manila construction paper does not photograph well – everything looks dirty!)
I love that messy, fingerpaint-lovin’ grin!
Muffin Tin Monday and More: Green!
Posted by: | CommentsAnother Monday, another adorable meal eaten from a muffin tin. My kids love Mondays just for the fun of lunch!
This week, the Muffin Tin Monday theme at Muffin Tin Mom was the color GREEN… just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. KarateKid and GoGoGirl are still sick, so we are having another at-home day & we worked lots of art into the day just like we did last week with the color yellow.
First we read these books…
Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni – a fun story about making green; Jack and the Leprechaun by Ivan Robertson; and It’s St. Patrick’s Day by Rebecca Gomez.
Then the kids made coffee filter shamrocks while I put our tins together. I set out droppers of water, one with blue food coloring and one with yellow. The kids dripped and dropped blue and yellow onto shamrocks cut from coffee filters and made beautiful green shamrocks!
Next, it was time to eat!
Green veggies (cucumber, celery, broccoli, and green pepper) with green-dyed ranch dip, and a green kiwi. We also had green “Hulk Shakes” – smoothies made from orange juice, banana, frozen strawberries, and spinach. The kids loved the new fancy green mugs I picked up at the store this week!
After we ate, the kids used the extra parts of the green pepper to stamp and make shamrocks!
Our green pepper wasn’t the perfect shape for doing this, but they let their creative juices flow. GoGoGirl wound up pretty much fingerpainting the entire paper green. KarateKid made a cute leprechaun out of a handprint – complete with pot of gold and shillelagh!
Instead of dumping out our extra colored water from making our filter shamrocks earlier, we poured it into a couple of vases and put in some white flowers… both kids are excited to watch the flowers turn green by St. Patrick’s Day!
While KarateKid worked on his math (yes, when you homeschool, you can do your multiplication on a slate, using sidewalk chalk, lying in bed – isn’t homeschooling the best?), GoGoGirl used two new transfer set-ups with a green theme. She spooned green floral glass marbles from one bowl to another using a small metal scoop, and tiny green split peas from one tiny metal bowl to another using a tiny wooden spoon.
I had one more green project up my sleeve before nap time… cutting out green hearts from construction paper and using them to make shamrocks. The heart-cutting was too hard for three-year-old GoGoGirl, so I wound up cutting out some hearts for her while she snipped the scraps into tiny green confetti. When her shamrock was glued down, I added the “S is for shamrock.” KarateKid made his own shamrock and then used some extra green and yellow paper to make a green pot full of gold to hide behind the shamrock.
It was a wonderful GREEN morning here! To see more green muffin tins, click through to Muffin Tin Mom.
Brick Roads and Submarines: YELLOW
Posted by: | CommentsColored foods are the name of the game this week over at Muffin Tin Monday, and this week the kids were all eating fun meals inspired by the color YELLOW.
Since my kids are sick (both have pink eye and GoGoGirl has bronchitis as well), we had to stay home today and miss our drama, gymnastics, and karate classes. To make up for it, I decided to take the YELLOW theme and streeeeeeeetch it all through our day.
We started with YELLOW BRICK ROADS. After the morning medicines and a light breakfast, the three of us curled up together in bed for two hours to read aloud the Charles Santore version of The Wizard of Oz.
I love this version: it is long enough, at 94-picture-book-size pages, to satisfy KarateKid’s hunger for a long adventure and detailed story, but the illustrations appear on every page, sometimes taking up entire two-page spreads, and are lush and lovely enough to satisfy GoGoGirl’s desire to soak it all in visually.
It is an abridgment of the original text, specifically a careful condensation of the text, done gently so that virtually no language other than Baum’s own is used. I love that, because too often I seek out an abridged version of a classic tale only to wince at the changes made in language, style, and tone. This one is lovely.
I have to add that my kids are not familiar with the movie version of The Wizard of Oz. We don’t own it, so KarateKid has only seen it once, a couple of years ago. The books are so much richer and delve more deeply into the fantasy world that it seems a better fit for KarateKid to fall in love with the world first, through the books, and then view the movie as an interesting interpretation of what he already loves – in the same way he loves Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. I think he’ll soon be interested in the original Baum novels, as he can read this version aloud with ease.
This is the first time we’d read a long book aloud to GoGoGirl, and it has been forever since I needed to read one aloud to KarateKid, and so I’d forgotten how dry my throat can get. I was giddy at the realization that KarateKid and I could now swap off every 20 pages or so. I’ve never really heard him read a novel aloud, just funny passages here and there or picture books to his sister. I was absolutely charmed by his skill & theatrical nature as he read the Emerald City scene – he had a blast doing the voices.
When we’d finished reading, we decided to use some yellow paint to create our own brick roads. I’ll be linking this project up with stART this week over at A Mommy’s Adventures!
First, I gave the kids long pieces of paper from a roll we have. I poured yellow tempera paint into Styrofoam trays from our reuse box, and gave them each three types of kitchen sponge: a small rectangle, a large rectangle, and a large rectangle with metallic bristle lines.
Next, I suggested to the kids that they could use the sponges to stamp yellow paint onto the paper as one way to make a yellow brick road.
GoGoGirl is definitely not feeling herself today, but the paint perked her up a bit. She had fun stamping with all the sponges and using extra colors of paint too. She proudly showed me her wonderfully messy hand.
KarateKid loved the idea of the project, and after he’d made a whole road, I gave him two cookie cutters to use to stamp some people along the road. Here’s his finished project:
While the kids were stamping and painting and creating at the kitchen table, I was making our lunch. Originally I was going to make this meal as a brunch today before going out, so the foods are breakfast-y! We had cornbread (made in muffin tins) and mini crustless quiches (made in muffin tins) as well as some yellow fruits – bananas and pineapples (only bananas for GoGoGirl, who is allergic to pineapple).
I even set out my yellow footed muffin cup to be our butter dish!
The mini quiche are very easy: I simply mixed 3/4 cup of egg beaters with 3/4 cup of shredded cheese, and then mixed in some crumbled bacon and sauteed onion and yellow bell pepper. This made 9 mini quiche which baked for about 18 minutes at 375F. I’ve done them before in the silicone liners but used paper today so the liners would also be yellow… that was a mistake! They do not come easily away from the paper liners! Do not try this at home; use silicone liners or simply a greased muffin tin instead. The tops and insides were quite yummy, though.
After an extra-long siesta (GoGoGirl slept for more than 3 hours), we decided to fill the late afternoon hours before dinner with another messy yellow activity!
You might need a little background story for this one… you see, tomorrow we had planned to go to a Beatles Sing-Along at a homeschooling friend’s house. We’d have missed it because of the illnesses, but it turned out that she needed to reschedule, so we’re hoping to be healthy by the time she’s ready to host a houseful of rockin’ homeschoolers. We’ve been listening to the 1 album (all their songs that hit #1) in the van lately, so we have Beatles on the brain.
So… the kids played Yellow Submarine, in our own weird way. We got out a big ol’ bowl of lemon pudding that I’d thrown together, (many, many sale-price boxes of lemon pudding mix later…) and got messy!
Yes, that’s a bowl of pudding…
…with a toy submarine in it.
We also dumped in most of one of those little tubes of plastic toys – sailboats and ocean liners and divers and submarines. I also put on “Yellow Submarine” repeating on the cd player.
The kids also had fun with measuring spoons and little plastic cups. GoGoGirl, in particular, loved filling these up and then dropping a guy or a boat in one and hollering, “OOPS!”
KarateKid, like me, enjoyed the sensation of squeezing the pudding through his fingers, letting it drip down, plunging both hands at once into the deep bowl of pudding.
Then he figured out that he could make a little fountain – and a fart noise! – by squeezing his hands together in just the right way.
The kids had a blast with the pudding, and played with it for almost an hour. I had saved a small bowl of uncontaminated pudding for each of us to enjoy after the messy fun was done, too. It was absolutely worth the time to make the pudding & the effort of cleaning it up afterwards to get this look on the face of an otherwise miserably sick girl:
The whole yellow day was a success: we had enough calm activities to rest weary bodies, enough interesting activities to distract us from running noses and watery eyes, and enough fun to make us all smile!
George Washington’s Birthday
Posted by: | CommentsHappy Birthday, George Washington!
Painting by R. Peale
George and Abe brought the kids presents (play money and “Campaign in a Box” kits from the dollar section of the craft store) last week on President’s Day, but we didn’t do much more to celebrate then because we were spending the day off with friends.
Since KarateKid has been a long-time fan of George Washington, we decided to spend the morning today re-reading our collection of George Washington books as a way to celebrate. Here’s what we enjoyed from our shelves this morning:
- A Picture Book of George Washington by David Adler – a short and simple look at his life.
- George Washington by Ingri & Edgar d’Aulaire – this is a much longer biography which ends at his election to president, but contains lush lithographs and the rich language that is the hallmark of the d’Aulaire books.
- George Did It by Suzanne Trip Jurmain – pairs well with the d’Aulaire book, because this story focuses on George’s reluctance to accept the position of president (because he was nervous that he wouldn’t do a good job), and so picks up where the last book left off, focusing entirely on George becoming president.
- George Washington and the General’s Dog by Frank Murhpy – this is KarateKid’s old favorite, the Step Into Reading book that started his interest. It’s a fun level 3 story about George’s love for animals and how he found a lost dog and returned it to the General Howe, the leader of the British army, during a break in the battle in 1777.
- In 1776 by Jean Marzollo – a very quick, rhyming picture book giving the bare bones of the American Revolution.
- If You Grew Up with George Washington by Ruth Belov Gross – a detailed look at what life was like in the 1700’s, with line drawn illustrations by Jack Kent. The newer version of this book has full color illustrations by a different artist, but I’m partial to Jack Kent!
- Let’s Play Soldier, George Washington by Peter and Connie Roop – this is one short and simple chapter book (about 60 pages at RL 3.5, according to the back cover) from a series called Before I Made History which talks about the childhoods of famous people, so most of the book talks about George’s childhood with only the final chapter breezing through his later years.
These are the other books that we have pulled out to enjoy later today or this week:
- George Washington’s Breakfast by Jean Fritz (our copy has nice illustrations by Paul Galdone, another one of my favorites) – the story of a young boy in modern times who is named George Washington Allen and wants to learn all about George Washington.
- George Washington’s Cows by David Small – a silly, rollicking picture book supposing that even George’s cows were special and brilliant, had their own room in his house, wore clothes, could read and count and dance.
- George Washington (DK Biography) by Lenny Hort – quite in depth but with DK’s usual gorgeous photographs.
- George Washington: The Man Who Would Not Be King by Stephen Krensky – a longer biography at about a 6th grade reading level.
- George Washington, Spymaster by Thomas Allen – from National Geographic, this is a longer book about the Revolutionary War and George’s role in it. MechDaddy and KarateKid will be reading this one together and discussing it.
We also talked about the cherry tree myth (“I cannot tell a lie”) and how George’s biographer made up that story to make a point about George’s ethics and honesty (how ironic!), and that even though it didn’t actually happen, it’s a fun story. We talked about the cherry blossoms in Washington DC and made a few of our own:
The kids traced their hands and a bit of their arms and cut those out to make the tree trunks. The trunks were glued to another piece of paper and then the kids dipped their fingers into white and pink paint and fingerpainted little dots to make the cherry blossoms.
Later, KarateKid wrote up a little page that said, “Ten Things I Know About George Washington” including lines like “He crosst the Delwer in December 1776.” It is so hard for KarateKid to let go of his need to spell everything correctly but just this once I asked him to do his best on his own instead of asking me how to spell all the words. So much of the time he’d rather just not write at all than spell things wrong. Of course spelling is an important skill, but I don’t want to the fact that his spelling level is so far behind his reading level to make him feel he can’t write. He did pretty well overall, but “hippopotamus” truly stymied him! (At least one set of George Washington’s teeth were made from hippopotamus tusks.)
All in all, it was a fun way to spend the morning. Did you do anything special this year to celebrate President’s Day or Washington’s Birthday?
stART: Curious George and the Chocolate Factory
Posted by: | CommentsWho doesn’t love chocolate – and monkeys? Both were part of our stART project this week!
My kids have both been fans of Curious George for a very long time. In fact, Aunt Robin bought KarateKid the big anthology of original Curious George stories when he was about a year and a half old, and we read that book to shreds – we had to take it everywhere with us and MechDaddy started calling one of the stories “Curious George Rides a &#@%!* Bike” because he’d read it so many times!
We also have two smaller anthologies of the shorter books that were based on episodes of an early tv show of George, though we’ve never seen that show. One of our favorites is Curious George and the Chocolate Factory.
Since this week was Valentine’s Day and we had a lot of chocolate, we decided to do a special project to go along with this book for stART.
We gathered our materials: flour, salt, and cocoa powder.
The kids helped me make some cocoa-scented salt dough. We mixed about 1/2 c. flour, 1/2 c. cocoa, 1 c. salt, and 1 c. water to make a dough. (I think one of us added a little too much water, so we had to add some extra flour – but it’s a very forgiving dough. If it’s too wet, add flour. If it’s too dry, add water.)
I think all kids love to help in the kitchen, mine certainly do – whether it’s making dinner or playdough. We had fun measuring and mixing together.
Then the fun began – playing with the dough. This is a salt dough, meant to be baked, and so our hands got pretty dry and crusty after working with it for a while – this dough wouldn’t work well as a regular playdough to use for a long time! (I have a different chocolate-scented recipe that I use for playdough.)
One exciting part was that because we were doing this project on Valentine’s Day, which was Sunday, MechDaddy was home and sat in on our project. He misses so many of our interesting art and craft projects and science experiments that it was extra special to have him with us for this one.
Both my kids love this little story about Curious George and the Man with the Yellow Hat stopping by a chocolate factory to buy some candies. George slips onto the factory floor with a tour group but accidentally bumps the conveyor belt up to “extra fast” and the candies fly by so quickly that the workers can’t keep up – but a clever little monkey can, and his fast fingers save the day.
Both KarateKid and GoGoGirl have always been drawn to the page below, where Curious George learns that the swirls on the tops of the chocolates show what kind of filling is inside:
I have spent countless hours staring at this page with my kids and talking about the marvelous swirls! We set the book out on our table, open to this page, to take a little inspiration for making our chocolates.
We made round chocolates and oblongs, tiny M&Ms and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a chocolate chip cookie and a chocolate bar, banana creams inspired by the book.
When we were done making the shapes – we only used about half of our dough – we baked them in a slow oven (250F) for about two hours. We let them cool and then used a glossy brown paint to paint most of them. In the picture below, you can see a few that are lighter brown, or have lighter brown swirls – those parts are unpainted. We also left the bottoms unpainted so we can still smell the cocoa!
We filled up GoGoGirl’s heart-shaped candy box, and the dough goodies now have a special place in her play kitchen!
This project was fun from start to finish – reading a favorite book, making dough in the kitchen, playing with the dough with MechDaddy, painting the chocolates, and winding up with a great addition to our pretend kitchen area. The kids are so proud of their finished chocolates!
To see more projects that include a story and art, visit A Mommy’s Adventures.
Mardi Gras: King Cake, Drachmas, and Glitter
Posted by: | CommentsCelebrating Mardi Gras with an opinionated boy who believes more deeply in the Greek, Norse, and Egyptian Gods than the Christian one turned out to be pretty interesting.
Me: “To start, do you remember the story of Jesus? Christians believe that he was the son of their God and a woman on Earth named Mary.”
KarateKid: “The son of a god and a mortal woman? What’s so special about that? That’s just like all the other kids at Camp Half-Blood.”
Only Jesus wasn’t guided by a satyr…
Then we got into the discussion of Easter and how it was pretty stingy of the Christian god to only resurrect one guy, and his own son, at that. It’s a good point, actually… ! A long discussion followed when he asked why eggs are special at Easter, and we talked about the pagan celebrations and the early Christians using the older rituals to help steer the people towards the new religion.
Eventually, I started discussing the cultural celebration of Mardi Gras (since we celebrate the cultural Christmas, Easter, etc. and not the religious ones). That made a whole lot more sense to him, and he liked the idea of a party.
Whatever the day was meant to celebrate, the kids gladly dove into their table of presents – beads, masks, doubloons, and pinwheels in the traditional New Orleans Mardi Gras green, yellow, and purple, plus two small games that happened to fit the color scheme.
Later, the kids got to trading each other the piles of doubloons for goods and services… only, by that time, they were calling them drachmas.
We decided to make our own super-easy version of King Cakes for breakfast.
We took some refrigerated cinnamon bun dough and stretched it out a little to make a ring shape – though by the time they were done baking, the rings had almost completely closed back up into regular buns!
The kids decorated the buns with tinted icing – green, yellow, and purple, of course – and sprinkles too.
Only I didn’t have purple sprinkles. Those of you who know me well will not be surprised to hear that after I searched unsuccessfully for purple sprinkles this weekend, last night I had a dream about shopping for purple sprinkles! In my dream I found them…
In real life, we used red in place of purple, and they tasted just as good.
After breakfast, I had another lesson in patience. It’s not easy to let a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old help make dinner, especially when they both want a turn with the very sharp knife cutting up onions and peppers and celery! But I know it is absolutely worth my time to help them start to learn these skills and to encourage their interest. We made a not-at-all-authentic crock-pot jambalaya, and it was very yummy.
I loved watching GoGoGirl in her play kitchen later in the day looking for the same ingredients that we’d used – tomatoes, celery, onion, garlic, bacon, sausage, ham. It got me thinking that I should keep an eye out for someone’s broken Little Dipper – you know, those tiny 2-cup crock-pots meant for dips or sides. If I clipped the cord off one, it would be the perfect addition to her play kitchen.
We broke out some special glitter paints today – can you guess which three colors?
I also had the neatest project in the back of my mind – that we could use small boxes and other interesting items from our box of recyclables to make Mardi Gras floats, and we could paint them with glitter paint, and put on music and have a parade in the living room!
Wouldn’t that have been fun?
But my kids were too interested in the paint, and kept asking for different tools or different types of paper, and just wanted to experiment with the paint for an hour.
And that was good too.
GoGoGirl favored the globs-of-paint technique:
KarateKid made several paintings where he did a light wash of color over the entire sheet, and he did some masks too:
It was fun, and festive, and delicious, just the way every holiday should be!
stART: One Fish, Two Fish
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Since we started the week with a Seuss-inspired Muffin Tin, it seemed only fitting to do an art project inspired by One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
First, we decided to make some zany creatures like the Yink and the Nook.
I set out a variety of collage materials – toilet paper tubes, plastic cups, googly eyes, pom poms, popsicle sticks, plastic lids – and two very full bottles of school glue.
The kids had a marvelous time choosing things and squeezing out obscene amounts of glue all over the place!
In fact, they enjoyed this so much that we have left the table of collage things out all week. I have had one or two moments where I realized GoGoGirl was Gluing Without Supervision, but we avoided any serious spills or gluing-the-lizards-to-the-couch incidents.
Here are just a couple of the kids’ creations. The house is slowly filling with aliens, robots, animals, monsters, farmers, and “girls from China who snore” – that’s GoGoGirl’s cupcake liner creation below.
In addition to this fun free-form art, I also did a week-long project with the kids.
First, we made handprints with paint.
When they were dry, we cut them out.
Another day, we used bubble wrap dipped in paint to create the background of the mural.
The kids love to play with the bubble wrap and pat it down onto the paper. Sometimes GoGoGirl gets a little over-enthusiastic and starts to smear it around, but with some encouragement she goes back to the gentle patting that makes nicer prints.
Another day, after the background was dry, we glued the handprints on and gave them some googly eyes. KarateKid decided to cut out some green paper for seaweed and make a really neat sea anemone in the middle. Here is our finished mural:
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
For more great story + art activities, visit A Mommy’s Adventures.
SNOW Much Fun
Posted by: | CommentsMore snow was falling when we woke up this morning, so we decided to make our own SNOW DAY.
First we read these eight picture books about snow:
Snow Music by Lynne Rae Perkins has such neat use of language. We love to whisper together in chorus “fep fep fep fep” to make the sound of a snowfall.
A Silly Snowy Day by Michael Coleman is the story of a tortoise who ventures outside in winter. “A tortoise outside in winter? Ridiculous!”
The Big Snow by Berta and Elmer Hader is one of KarateKid’s favorites. It touches on dozens of types of animals of the forest and meadow preparing for winter as they watch the geese fly south, and then enjoying the seed-and-corn feast that a man and woman spread for the animals after the Big Snow.
Stranger in the Woods by Carl Sams II is a modern classic. I think most families have seen this one, with its fantastic photographs of animals exploring a snowman decorated with nuts and carrots.
Prize in the Snow by Bill Easterling is the story of a boy who wants to imitate his older brother and trap a rabbit or bird like a big hunter. When he does trap a rabbit, he’s startled to find that the starving rabbit is skin and bones, and rather than bringing the animal home to show off, he gently leaves the carrot by the rabbit’s den and plans to return the next day with some bread. Feeding the animals in winter is a big theme around here!
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, illustrated by Susan Jeffers is a wonderful version of this poem. I’m helping KarateKid work on memorizing it this week.
When It Starts to Snow by Phillis Gershator is a rhyming story about what the animals of the woods and the farm do when the snow comes.
In the Snow: Who’s Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George is another of KarateKid’s favorites. This one gives clues that the kids find (tracks through the barberry bush) and asks, “Who’s been here?” (ruffed grouse).
While we were reading, we enjoyed a snowman breakfast.
Mini whole-wheat bagels with cream cheese, craisins, and carrots to decorate, and some hard-boiled egg-white snowballs on the side. Both kids had seconds, and KarateKid even had thirds!
(Don’t you love GoGoGirl’s pajamas? It’s an orange Halloween top with pink-and-purple roller-skating bottoms!)
After breakfast and books, the kids went outside to play in the fresh snow. They quickly discovered that the base layer was WET and so when they came back in 45 minutes later, they were simply dripping… but still grinning from ear to ear. KarateKid is so happy that GoGoGirl is big enough to really enjoy sledding down our small hill this year.
The kids came in to find that I’d been prepping two art projects for them.
First, we had to make the Painter’s Tape Snowflakes that I have seen on dozens of blogs this winter – I’m pretty sure the idea originated on Frugal Family Fun.
We started with light blue construction paper and added a snowflake shape made out of painter’s tape.
I wanted KarateKid to be able to lay out his own tape, but it was hard for him to cut the tape squarely or to make the pieces about the same length. So I cut all the pieces for him (three big pieces about 6-7 inches long and 12 little pieces about 1 1/2 – 2 inches long per snowflake) and lined them up along the table so he could peel the tape away and lay it out on his paper.
Once we had all our tape snowflakes down, the kids sponge-painted with white tempera paint all over the paper. We gave the paint a minute or two to settle – but not long enough for the paint to dry on top of the tape! – and gently pulled the tape away. Here’s the finished project:
Next, we kept out the white paint and took off our socks! I had the kids each make one white footprint on each of six papers. When the paint had dried a bit, I got out the Q-tips and several other colors of paint and let them decorate their snowmen. I loved this project because it has both kids’ artwork on one page.
I was going to give you just one example of this project, but KarateKid had so much fun with it that I decided to share all six. He was having a blast making each snowman unique, so here they are. (You can click on each picture to see a larger image.)
“Traditional Snowman”
“Alien Snowman”
This one has two hats, two noses, four arms…
“Willy Wonka Snowman”
The kids recently watched the newer version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so KarateKid made a Willy Wonka complete with thick black sunglasses, and GoGoGirl made a red Oompa-Loompa.
“Penguin Snowman”
“Sherlock Holmes Snowman”
“Me Snowman”
This one is KarateKid, with green hat and scarf and glasses.
I’m a little sad to realize that next year, his foot won’t fit on the paper this way!
After our painting projects, and some time spent watching the anoles play, we had quesadillas for lunch and cinnamon-sugar snowflake tortillas for dessert. (Just warm up a tortilla, then fold it and cut it like a snowflake! Brush with butter and top with cinnamon and sugar and warm it back up. Yum!)
We had a delightful SNOW DAY!
Winter Prints
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Thanks to some great inspiration from Funny Days with Mommy and Maddie, we did a sweet winter art project this morning.
We made delightful winter prints by cutting out shapes (polar bears, foxes, and snowflakes) from contact paper. We pressed the contact paper onto sheets of card stock (one picture per sheet) and then sponge painted right over the shape with light blue paint.
As soon as the artists declared a page fully painted, I gently tugged the contact paper away and we were left with deliciously white bears, foxes, and snowflakes to admire.
I love collaborative projects, where a little help from me (cutting out shapes from contact paper) and some free work by the kids (sponge painting all over a paper) results in a beautiful image. We’ll definitely do this project again, in all sorts of ways for all the seasons! Thanks, Amanda!
A Busy and Beautiful Life
Posted by: | CommentsOur life has been so busy, and so beautiful, lately, that I haven’t taken the time to blog it. I’m trying to throw together a quick recap post tonight before even more beautiful things distract me further!
In just the past two days – two little days! – the kids and I have gone to:
- a local opera company’s production of Hansel and Gretel
- a holiday parade complete with floats, bands, candy, and Santa
- a touring musical production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
- “First Friday” – a night downtown where all the art galleries, cafes and funky shops stay open late and have special events, where we enjoyed an hour-long trolley tour of the city (mostly architecture and a little history), jazz and yummy food at a favorite cafe, and some gallery wandering
I love live music, and being able to hear opera, marching bands, a musical, and jazz in all sorts of wonderful venues within two days has been delightful. My kids loved all of these wonderful opportunities, they adore live performances as much as I do.
Leigh is blogging about our First Friday adventures tonight, with lots of photos, because I didn’t get many pictures with my camera and my computer is giving me problems trying to read the few I did snap. Here’s just one of her shots of our wonderful kids tonight:
We had a great time on the trolley tour, where we learned all sorts of things about the founders of our area and one of its leading architects, about various styles including Victorian and Gothic, the three types of pillars (one of which Nate later remembered as “Ironic”), early industry in our area (cigars!) and how the city got both its name and its nickname. We learned about the confluence of our rivers and how many bridges and carousels there are in our area. The kids really seemed to enjoy our tour guide – well, GoGoGirl relaxed so much that she fell asleep with her head in Emily’s lap! But she laughed about it later, so I suppose she enjoyed the ride as well.
After the tour we went to a great little cafe, where we waited half an hour for a table, but the wait was very pleasant because of the jazz trio playing. Then we had some yummy dinner – it’s a wonderful place for gluten-free Anna, there are plenty of choices on the menu. I had a parmesan-sage crusted chicken wrap with balsamic asparagus and sun-dried tomatoes – are there enough YUMs in the world to describe that?
Then we wandered the streets looking for some galleries to check out.
I don’t know if I can even write this next bit without tearing up. It’s one of those sweet and shining motherhood moments.
We went to a second-floor gallery and started looking around. KarateKid was really interested in checking out some of the art, and at one point called me over from across the room to admire a painting – one that Leigh & I had spent some time admiring earlier. It was an interesting piece, much like an impressionist landscape on the top, with the grass part of the landscape then continuing over the bottom half of the canvas. In several places on the grass were clusters of bright and textured lines – almost like multi-colored wires laid across the painting, giving it a multimedia look. KarateKid and I talked about it for some time and then he asked to buy it – unfortunately, with its $1200 price tag, I had to gently explain why we couldn’t get it.
We continued around the gallery, looking at more paintings, some jewelry, and quite a bit of pottery. One of the potters had some blue glazed plates out that had wire and bead adornments that made small handles on the sides. I stopped to admire those and told KarateKid how much I liked them. He saw the $58 price tag and remembered that he had $60 in his save-account at home. He announced that he was going to buy me one of the plates, because I loved them so much.
I tried to tell him that I didn’t need him to do that, his allowance money is his own, he didn’t need to spend it on me, that we could go to other galleries and he might find something for me at a lower price… but his mind was made up. He said he wanted me to have it because I admired it so much. Leigh offered to help him out by putting the purchase on her credit card and letting him pay her back later (so I didn’t have to buy my own present!), and the two of them followed the artist’s husband into the other room to complete the purchase.
He was so proud of his decision. And the plate is GORGEOUS. (I’ll post a picture if I ever get my computer to behave!) And it just made me cry, to have my little boy buy me some art. (For the record, he told me later that I should consider this an early Christmas present!)
Sniff. Good music, good friends, good food, fine art, and a mature, loving, generous son. Life is so good.
