I Finished the Wool Felt Moveable Alphabet (and the Dolch Sight Word Cards!)

 

Once upon a time, waaaay back in January 2023, Past Julie thought, "Ooh, I have the perfect idea for a cute Christmas gift for my niece! I'll hand-sew her a moveable alphabet out of the rest of my stash of wool felt. I'll just sew, like, one letter a week and she'll have SO many letters by Christmas!"

June 2023 rolled around, and Past Julie thought, "Hmm, no big deal. I'll just start stitching a couple of letters a week."

During the October meeting of my mending group, I happily cut out letters and burbled to my fellow menders that "I just need to sew one a day and they'll be done in plenty of time before Christmas!"

During the November meeting, I said, a little more grimly, "Just two a day and I can squeak them into the mail just in time for Christmas."

Those last couple of days in December, it was more like six a day while binge-watching Chicago Med DVDs, but look at the glorious result!

I am SO pleased with them! 

Here's a rooster for size comparison, because the entire flock could not get it out of their heads that these colorful nuggets were perhaps made of delicious chicken food:

My favorite part of this project is that even though yes, it took a lot of me-hours to accomplish, the materials are ENTIRELY stash!

The felt is a really nice merino wool felt that I bought long ago for projects with my own kids (it's this exact set, but I bought 8"x10" cuts instead of the 4"x6" cuts shown here). I blanket stitched the letters with basic-grade Amazon embroidery floss and I stuffed each letter with snips of that same felt, and won my own personal game of wool felt chicken because after the very last letter was stuffed, I had less than a handful of little wool felt snippies left. 

I even had all the colors left! I managed a complete rainbow to start the set--

--and also had enough grey, brown, black, and white to make a nice variety and multiples of every letter (except for X and Q, ahem):

My partner handled creating all the Dolch sight words in the same font and size, and I backed each one in pretty paper and laminated it so my niece can use them as templates to make words with the wool felt letters:

Wool felt has such a lovely feel, though, and the colors are so pretty, that I'm hoping that the letters alone are a fun sensory experience. Sensory experiences build intrinsic knowledge and increase one's love for a topic.

It's clear that the chickens, at least, appreciate the sensory appeal!

Even though this project took a loooong time, it was not hard at all, and I actually would recommend it as a beginner-level hand-sewing project for absolutely anyone. Over Thanksgiving break my college kid sewed a perfectly acceptable "I" after about five seconds of instruction, and it's now mixed in there somewhere with the rest of the letters, completely indistinguishable from the lot (well, *I* can distinguish it, but definitely nobody else could)...

Best. Christmas. Yet. Now, to figure out something even more unwieldy to make for next year!

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The Best Homemade Play Dough Recipe

2011 play dough creation

I don't remember the last time my kids genuinely played with play dough for fun, but I still make this homemade play dough recipe almost every week.

I sell the play dough, undyed or dyed the color of your choice, by the pound in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, but I don't see why you can't simply have the recipe so you can make your own!

2008 play dough creation. I added glitter to the blue one!

The recipe makes about one pound, three ounces of the softest, squishiest play dough you'll ever feel. It's reluctant to dry out, it holds shape well, it's soft enough to feel awesome on your hands but firm enough that playing with it strengthens those little grip and finger muscles, and it dyes like a dream. 

And it takes VERY little time to make! Certainly a LOT less time than it takes to drive to Wal-mart and back for Play Doh!

Another 2011 play dough creation. 

Here are the ingredients you need:

• 1 cup flour. I try to use the cheapest flour I can find for this recipe, usually bleached all-purpose. However, when my kids were tiny and sometimes "needed" play dough right that minute, I used to use whatever flour I had on hand. I've used unbleached flour, wheat flour, and on one personally very sad occasion, organic flour (grr! It's so expensive!), and the play dough always came out great. I know different flours will change the necessary water content, though, so if you're trying for something specific, you'll probably want to experiment a bit.
• 1/2 cup salt. The gold standard for this is, again, the cheapest iodized salt you can find. A couple of times I've run out and used salt with a larger grain, and although it worked, you can definitely see and feel the larger grains in the finished play dough. Cheapo iodized salt, however, will make your play dough as smooth as butter!
• 2 tsp cream of tartar. Cream of tartar aids consistency and stability, so you can skip it if you need to, but the play dough won't be as nice in texture or as long-lived. 
• 1 tbsp oil. Again, any oil works for this recipe, but I like to use the cheapest available. Canola is the cheapest, but if all I have on hand is olive, I'm just as happy with the finished play dough. You'd think that the color of olive oil would affect the tone of the finished white play dough... but it doesn't!
• 1 cup water. 
• dye (optional). If you want to dye your entire batch a single color, dump it into the pot with the rest of the ingredients. Otherwise, knead the dye into the finished play dough. I have tried every dye I can think of, from the cheapest to the nicest store-bought food dyes, homemade and store-bought natural dyes, liquid watercolors, and powdered tempera. For color saturation, my favorite BY FAR is powdered tempera! It will stain your hands while you're kneading it into the play dough but it won't stain your hands while you're playing with it. It also lightens the play dough in a way that feels absolutely magical and wreaks absolute hell on my ability to fit a full pound of play dough into the containers I sell it in. 

Step 1: Add all ingredients to a single pot.

Just dump it all  in!

Step 2: Cook over medium heat, stirring continually. 

This is time-consuming, because you want to cook the play dough low and slow so you don't scorch it, and you have to stir it continuously to keep it from sticking to the pot. I've never timed myself, but I do get through several minutes of a podcast or streaming show while I stir.

When the play dough loses its gummy appearance and wants to ball up, remove it from the heat and remove the play dough from the pot.

Put the pot to soak in the sink before you even try to wash it, because flour + water = glue!

Step 3: Knead until smooth.

When you dump the play dough out onto your work surface, it will look like this:

As soon as it's cool enough to touch, knead it until it looks like this!

Here's the final weight of my finished play dough:

It's ready to play with immediately, and will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator in an airtight container. When my kids were little, I'd toss it when it started looking dirty from their play, but also toss it immediately if it smells rancid or the texture and consistency change for the worse. 

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An Overhead Projector Christmas Tree

Probably anyone who owns an old-school overhead projector knows how much free play they get. Sure, we use the projector for map tracing, copywork of all sorts, and all sorts of math and science activities, but with just the clear plastic sheets and a nice set of overhead markers, the kids dream up all sorts of fun play--during a playdate a couple of weeks ago, one little kid drew at least a dozen scenery pages on the plastic sheets and then projected an entire play that she'd just made up, using her fingers as all of the characters.

If you have any other accessories, such as translucent pattern blocks, then you're perfectly set up. I bring out the overhead projector as an actual party activity, especially for little siblings or friends on the younger side of the guest list, but my own kids will still spend entire quiet mornings or afternoons engrossed in play with the projector.

Only rarely, outside of helping out with some academic activity related to one of their areas of interest, do I set up an actual "activity" involving the overhead projector, but recently I invited Syd to create an overhead projector Christmas tree.

She drew a tree on a clear plastic page:

She set the page on our projector, and decorated it with translucent geometric shapes:

She enjoyed its projection on the wall, and then took it apart and did it again!

Unfortunately, we only have a small amount of wall space suitable to using the overhead projector in our living room, although as wall space it is ideal, since you can tape a large piece of paper onto it and copy from the projector:

One day, however, the finished basement playroom will become a place that the children do not fear to tread (something about a monster with lots of arms, and one of them is really long and has a pincher on it...), and therefore a place where it gets more use than as a dumping ground for out-of-favor toys, and then, I tell you, THEN we'll have tidy shelves of art supplies and books and toys, and plenty of room in the middle for active play, and a TV so that I have room to use my old-school workout videos...

...oh, and a much larger wall space for the overhead projector.

Here's Our Homeschool This Week

This week, we've:

played endless games of Sorry; built lots with blocks--

--and I mean LOTS with blocks--

--judiciously spent saved Christmas/birthday money at our local toy/educational supplies store (thanks, Papa!); put together one of those damn Playmobil sets according to instructions (bought at aforementioned store with aforementioned birthday money)--

--made pretty things with pattern blocks, both on the carpet and with translucent plastic pattern blocks on the overhead projector (both of those sets being brand-new school supply purchases from that same store, but by the Momma this time); watched Extreme Engineering; played briefly with our brand-new Cuisenaire rods(love that school shopping!); goofed around with a laser level; and cut out paper snowflakes. Syd played some Curious George online and with a dot-to-dot computer game; stamped with number stamps; and helped me make banana cookies, pancakes, rainbow cupcakes, and vegetable soup.

We spent plenty of time at PBSKids.com; spent plenty more time with books independently, especially my Will, who is a reading machine of late; visited the library a couple of times; watched a little Electric Company (the new version, not the old); had chapters from Nancy Drew and Just So Stories at bedtime; and listened to four or five of the Magic Tree House audiobooks. I can't even tell you the books that Will has devoured this week, but they include some Boxcar Children titles, 101 Dalmatians, some Magic Tree House titles, some Nancy Drew titles, some Shel Silverstein, and other picture books, chapter books, non-fiction, and poetry that she's come across.

The kids have taken many beautiful photographs on beloved subjects--

--played with Colorforms (another new school supply purchase); helped me paint some pretty paint in the basement; and attended a scrapbooking class at the public library--

--which was VERY well enjoyed. Syd decorated some frames for some maps I'm going to tack to the walls in their playroom--

--colored with Sharpies and crayons and colored pencils and whatever else she could find; masterminded the design and construction of her new skirt; and worked on some balancing butterflies, project still in progress:

Syd finished filling out her reading program form and submitted it to the library, earning herself a book as a prize. She also did some handwriting copywork for fun and helped me label stuff.

Will watched a LOT of Blue's Clues, sigh, and some Walking with Dinosaurs (or Walking with Prehistoric Beasts or Walking with Early Mammals, etc.); attended Critter Junction, an animal program at the local library; took care of the tadpoles, some teeny froggies, and the odd caterpillar or spider for a while; researched strawberry plants, rainbows, the ocean, giant sea turtles, and I don't even recall what else; and, big sigh, took a field trip to the Emergency Room and experienced the treatment for a cracked tibia, x-rays and hard cast 3/4 up the thigh and all. 

We played the rain stick and the recorder; listened to the Muppets and Throwing Muses and some seriously inane kids' music and other CDs; and had any number of dance parties. In addition, Syd's goal is to learn to whistle, so there's been much practicing of that, and even a screening of a documentary on the International Whistling Competition.

We began the timeline!!! We've added the epochs and some info on dinosaurs and human evolution; Will has big plans to cut up an extra Smithsonian dinosaur encyclopedia that we have on hand, and I still need to mark out some basic demarcations from early humans to the present so that we know where to put stuff. Will's also been into the short video clips on the Liberty's Kids web site, although she's very annoyed that I insist on supervising her visits there, since it contains outside advertising.

We walked and biked and scooted downtown and all around; helped with chores like grocery shopping and cleaning and gardening--

--went swimming; had boisterous playdates with good friends; picked blackberries and peaches--

--played on various playgrounds, including one magical maneuver on the monkey bars too many (CRACK!); and, most recently, practiced and practiced and practiced walking on crutches.

And that's how we homeschooled this week. Please, let next week be uneventful.

A Fight with Fluttershy, or, How to Sneak Interest-Led Preschool Reading, Writing, and Art into Your Small Child's Media Obsession

Somehow, Will has become obsessed with My Little Pony, without any actual exposure to the cartoon.

Well...I do have a couple of old-school My Little Pony figures from my own childhood that the kids play with, but we all refer to these as "baby horses." I dunno--do the ponies whisper into their brains, "We are really called My Little Pony. Ask your mommy to let you watch our cartoon"? At school, the kids spend half the day running around on the playground--do they intersperse soccer and animal doctor and who can slide down the slide the fastest with "Hey, did you catch yesterday's My Little Pony? Awesome!" Was she somehow exposed to My Little Pony radiation at the video rental place that has affected her on a cellular level?

Whatever the societal ills that have led us to this juncture, Will woke up this morning wanting to draw "a My Little Pony with wings." Okay... I sit her down with paper and markers, she draws for about a second, then scribbles in fury all over her page and freaks out in frustration because her picture doesn't look like the picture in her head. I'm not exactly happy with this, because her unhappiness with her own product makes me wonder if she's been too exposed lately to adult versions of drawing, or adult models of how to create a particular art product.

So I sit down with Will and attempt to talk her through what she wants to create--"Okay, start with a head--good. Now draw a body attached to the head." That lasts for maybe two seconds, with hysterical tears to follow. We're moving, now, progressively down my levels of preferences for how I'd like her to do her art.

First preference: the child creates her own art.

Second preference: an adult talks the child through the creation of the art she wants, while keeping the art materials, and thus the control, entirely in the child's hands.

Third preference: the adult provides the child with a model to copy to create the particular image she desires. So we go together to the Internet and do a Google image search for "My Little Pony," printing off a colorful picture of a candy-bright, chunky-hoofed horse-like critter for Willow to copy. This actually gets her through the creation of one entire picture, when then, unfortunately, is scribbled over and torn up and thrown on the floor in a screaming fury that then requires the said four-year-old to sit in my lap, weeping, for nearly ten minutes. Clearly, we're down to the last resort here.

Fourth preference: I print off some coloring pages from the Internet. My derision for coloring books is manifold--there is little scope for imagination in working with someone else's version of a scene, it models "how to do" a piece of art that my kids tend to want to imitate instead of doing their own far more creative visions, its filling-in-the-blanks doesn't reinforce the kind of manual arts skills I think they should be practicing, etc. However, on the plus side, it finally gives Will an acceptable (to her) My Little Pony picture to immerse herself in, and it's an acceptable way, at least, for her to follow her interest in My Little Pony. 

Speaking of high horses:I'm a tricky mama, however, and now my morning is centered around not cooking or cleaning (yay!), but channeling this interest into an activity equally satisfying for Will, but more in tune with my desire that she do something creative and educational. While the kids colored on these ridiculous cartoon Pony pages, I printed off a few horse coloring pages from the Internet and interspersed them in with the others. Here's Syd's horse:

  

I love the red devil eyes and the fiery red hooves Syd graced her horse with.

Then, while the kids were working on a couple of horse coloring pages, I sewed together a couple of blank books (I have got to remember to put aside a sewing machine needle or two just for sewing paper--I can't believe that I was so immersed in my own little mission that I sewed the books together with the nearly new ballpoint needle that was already in the machine). 

I sat down next to Will at the table and, when she was finished with her horse picture, I said, sweet and innocent as candy, "Here's a special blank book I just made for you. Do you want to tell me a horse story for it?" And Will proceeded to dictate a twenty-minute-long narrative about a unicorn named Chicka-dee-dee who gets a pet bird, meets a herd of unicorns, battles two dinosaurs, falls into the ocean, and disappears herself onto an airplane. Then she illustrated it:

 

Here's the dictation Syd gave me for her own book, and her illustration:

 

Does the phrase "Daddy's little girl" have any significance here?

So, yeah, I'm a manipulative parent who will use my so-far greater intelligence as mere deviousness in order to trick my child away from a pleasure she embraces and toward what I want. Well, if you can't manipulate your children, then who can you legally manipulate?

Dinosaurs on Film!

It's only 2:30 and so far:

1. Since the little kid now has the high fever that tormented the big kid this weekend, we didn't go to storytime at the local library this morning, and so while the little kid napped fitfully in the other room, the big kid and I worked on the dinosaur quilt for her mid-July birthday. This consists mostly of looking at all the dino T-shirt panels and dino fabric we've collected, re-stacking and re-sorting them--she's not even four years old yet, and the big kid already knows the best part of sewing. We did make a plan, however. Here is the big kid's concept sketch of the plan:

It really is a pretty accurate sketch: basically, we decided that each T-shirt panel would be surrounded by a wide border of printed fabric. I'd like the border to have the pattern match perfectly on all sides and to be pretty seamless, like a picture frame, so a log cabin quilt it is!

2. After the little kid wakes up howling and we nurse, have snacks, read books, have more snacks, spill some milk, do some laundry, eat watermelon outside, read another book, and I bully the big kid into getting dressed (I may have raised my voice just a smidge, but honestly--what did she do with her toothbrush? We never did find it!) so my partner can come get her, he takes her to school and then puts the little kid down for a nap while I eat some Minute Rice and read some more of this awesome blog I discovered the other day. The author takes beautiful photographs, makes awesome recycled sweater creatures like I'm learning how to do, and is a self-taught sewist, as well. Her blog entry on the Simplicity 3835 shirt pattern actually sent me to ebay to bid on one for myself. If I win it, it will be my very first pattern ever, so don't snipe me, y'all, because I swear I always get sniped.

3. After I finish my lunch (it was actually pretty gross, so yay, calorie deficit!), I spend an episode of Friday Night Lights finishing up a super-large item for my Craft for My Kids swap on Craftster. I'm almost finished, with maybe one or two smallish-mediums or large-ish smalls to make for my partner's little girlie.

4. I go in to nurse the little kid back to sleep (Matt has gotten me into Superman, oddly enough, so I'm working my way through the Superman in the Sixties collection. It is so weird), then creeeep out, holding my breath, and actually have time to finish tweaking and printing the dino photos I'm going to put in the kids' downstairs bathroom. This is Sue, from the Chicago Field Museum:

These are some of the kids' dino toys. One night the big kid and I got down her Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals (Smithsonian Handbooks) (gift alert: the kids totally need all these Smithsonian Handbooks) and she actually found the right picture for each of these dinosaurs and spelled their names for me so I could label their bellies with a Sharpie. This here is a velociraptor up front, and possibly a pachycephalosaurus behind it:

4. And now it's 3:00, the little kid is now sitting on my lap pestering me while I finish up, and we're about to go get the big kid from school. We can't go to the YMCA like we usually do because of the little kid's fever, we can't go to Sam's even though we need cookie dough for my last day of class tomorrow because my wallet is MIA, so if we're lucky we'll get invited to hang out with another mom and gossip while the kids run around and get dirty, and if not we'll come home and rock the neighborhood playground, and if those are our choices for spending the afternoon, then that probably just makes us pretty lucky in general.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, handmade homeschool high school studies, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!