Our Little Clay Moveable Alphabet

Rain, rain, RAIN!!!

We had a nice (though temporary) break from the rain this morning, so the older child and I spent some good hours scrubbing the deck and deck furniture and trimming down the shrubbery (my little kid is a hard worker when she puts her mind to it, and made the deck table and all four chairs sparkle with a scrub brush, dishwashing detergent, and the garden hose), but much of our time lately has been spent occupying ourselves while it rains, with coloring, puzzles, Berenstain Bears cartoons, the Wonderlab, and various little projects that I squirrel away until the time is right.

Yesterday morning, the time was right for FIMO. I've collected the odd little block of this polymer clay off and on whenever it's been on big sale, but I hadn't yet presented it to the girls. FIMO clay probably isn't the absolute bestest product in the world--I really ought to be using its US-made clone, Sculpey, since I try to buy American whenever practical, and even though FIMO is technically non-toxic, it IS a plastic and does contain PVC, so don't eat it or inhale it or sculpt with it every day for hours--but I love this stuff anyhow. I have a bit of a thing for bad boys.

The girlies, of course, went to town sculpting their own awesome little pretties--

--but I have been dying for a while now to do my own little project with these:

I made a moveable alphabet for the kiddos!

A moveable alphabet is a very big deal in the Montessori world, because it disassociates the cognitive practices of reading and composing from the physical practice of writing. Isolating a particular cognitive OR physical skill allows a child to focus, and better achieve mastery according to her own internal clock.

These letters are a little wonky, because I made them while kneading clay and mediating the girls, etc. Next time--and there will be a next time, and a time after, because a moveable alphabet requires numerous duplicates of every letter--I'll roll out the clay nicely onto parchment paper, and cut the alphabet and bake it without moving it around, so that the letters will look neater. The important thing, however, is that they're sturdy, being oven-baked, and fun--

--oh, and also educational:

And the letters get to play with their new pet tree, which Sydney created for them:

Or that might be the dog that she made. Definitely not the unicorn, because that one had an orange head.

P.S. Check out my latest posts over at Crafting a Green World--a tutorial for spraypaint reverse-stenciling on an EZ-Up, and a round-up of DIY options for price tags.

One of the MANY Reasons Why I Fear Clowns

He looks enough like a serial killer already--he couldn't even muster up a smile? Seriously, he looks like he's about to snatch me and screech off in his windowless van:

In other news, however, I LOVE that little top that I'm wearing. I wish that I still had it.

After the Cereal Bar: Cereal Box Matching Game Tutorial

One thing about buying a LOT of cereal when it's on big sale is that you then eat a lot of cereal. And when you eat a lot of cereal, you accumulate a lot of cereal boxes. Cereal boxes, like toilet paper tubes, are one of those things that I just can't throw in the recycling bin. I KNOW I'll need them sometime.

And that's how my house accumulates a lot of cereal boxes and toilet paper tubes.

The shelf in my study held one too many empty Cascadian Farms Cinnamon Crunch box yesterday, and so the girls and I took some time off from goofing off and reading books and watching Clifford's frakking Puppy Days to first, of course, do the activities on the backs of all the boxes:

A board game played with dinosaur avatars is fun.

Some of the boxes didn't have stuff so elaborate on the back, but instead word searches and riddles and picture puzzles, etc., so I cut those backs off to save as a quiet car activity for Willow. A QUIET car activity--wouldn't that be nice?

I've seen cereal box matching game projects off and on all over the interweb--plumpudding's cereal box matching game is the one that I can most readily recall--and my matching game isn't much different. Since all my cereal boxes are Cascadian Farms boxes, all with a big bowl of whatever cereal it is on the front, I made my matching pairs from that big bowl of cereal. I cut two large circles out of each bowl--

--until I had enough for a good game. The nice thing about using boxes that are all from the same brand is that the insides of the boxes are all from exactly the same kind of carboard, and so match exactly.

This is a good matching game for Sydney, especially--

--because although the pairs clearly belong together, they don't match exactly. This requires pattern recognition and sorting skills to make a positive match, and these are good skills for little children to practice.

I still have more cereal boxes left--can you believe it? I may make a cereal box puzzle next...

A Mother's Day Miracle

If you happen to know anything about my Willow, my talented, incredible, painfully shy Willow, a child who refused to participate in her school's kindergarten ritual of Reader's Chair, a child who weekly declines to participate with her classmates in their class ritual of Speaker's Rug, a child who didn't even want to stand in front of the class on her birthday to be sung to, then you will likely be as amazed as I am at what I am about to tell you.

Willow played in her first guitar recital today.

I am amazed. Awe-struck. Astonished.

Much of the credit goes to Willow's sweet guitar teacher. On the way to her latest lesson, Willow said to me, "I decided that I don't want to do the recital." I said, "Oh, that's fine, sweetie. Just tell Maja that when we get there." We walk in the door to Maja's house, Maja greets Willow and then asks, "Are you excited about your guitar recital?" Willow pauses for a couple of seconds, then quietly answers, "Yes."

Much of the credit also goes to the IU Pre-College Program in Guitar, which I cannot recommend highly enough. If you've ever been the victim of a preschool teacher who treats a class concert with all the solemnity and pomp of a major Broadway opening, leaving a path of weeping children with stress ulcers in her wake (and I have been the victim of this, OFTEN), then you, too, would appreciate the calmness and matter-of-factness in which the director of this guitar program ran the recital: small, well-lit concert hall; children who sit with their parents until their turn and then return to their parents immediately afterward; ample applause both before and after; no microphones; and duets with their teachers for all the youngest players. The only telling point that this small concert was actually taking place in a venue of great importance was the niceness of the outside scenery--

--which was perfect for some pre-concert romping:

Ample pre-concert romping is absolutely essential:

Before the concert began, I gave Willow my camera to keep her entertained. This is how she saw her own first guitar recital:

Guitar Music (Willow performed "Little Bunny," as translated from Serbian

and transcribed by her Serbian guitar teacher)

Guitar (held by Daddy)

When Willow's name was called she marched right up to her smiling teacher on stage, played her (terribly dischordant, out of tune, and off-beat, but who cares?) song in duet with her, and marched right back to us again.

It was a miracle.

Fortunately, I am well versed in miracles:

I've made a couple of my own, you know.

Go On! Let the Baby Spray Paint!

What harm can it do? It's not like she going to sneak out after you put her to bed with her lullabies and stuffed lovies and go out to tag the city.

And if she does do that...well, at least she'll have mastered proper spray paint technique. I HATE it when I walk by some graffiti and I see those big splotches with drips coming down, like the tagger accidentally got the spray paint too close to the wall. Amateurs, seriously.

To teach your baby to spray paint, you will need:

• BIG paper. Seriously, spray paint is not a miniature art. We use those big pads of Strathmore drawing paper, but rolls of newsprint would also work awesomely.
• spray paint. 
• a vertical surface, not an easel. An easel just isn't big or vertical enough. Find a clothesline or a fence to clip your paper to, or attach it to the backs of a couple of chairs that you've got outside. You are outside, aren't you? Because you also need to be outside.

1. Show your child where to stand to maintain the proper distance from the paper. This is really important, because it's instinctive, it seems, to want to creep in closer and closer as you work, but that's not how spray painting is properly done. Spray paint a line on the grass for the kid to stay on, perhaps.

2. Depending on how strong your child is, the proper form that you show them for holding the spray paint will vary. Spray paint actually takes a bit of strength to use. Willow, who is five, can easily spray paint by holding the can in both her fists, fingers toward her paper, and depressing the nozzle with both her thumbs together.

3. Set your kid free!

For us, spray painting is a nice large muscle activity, one of those things that it's fun to do when you want to do some art but you're tired of the kid being a couch-lump in the house all day. Because the spray paint doesn't cake up on the paper, the artwork itself also remains a nice background medium for additional artwork. Will turned the particular piece of art that she created on this day into a sign for the craft fair, and it worked very well.

Next I think I'll have her spray paint her name real fancy across the side of the garage.

Four

One

Two

Three

FOUR!!!

Happy Birthday, wonderful, wonderful Sydney. May your year be filled with as many pink doughnuts and toy ponies as any child could wish for.

Spray Paint and Felt Cake: Craft Fair WIPs

Don't even ask me about my foot. I'm clearly going to have to go back to Promptcare tomorrow and have it amputated or something. Did I mention that the girls were playing with my sewing stuff yesterday and made a mess and therefore I stepped on a hand-sewing needle with my bare foot? Blunt end first? And I had to pull it out with my own two hands, although I thought for a minute that I was going to have to get some pliers?

SAME FOOT!!!!

So no, we're not talking about that foot anymore.

In other news, I've been hobbling around getting my butt in gear for the start of craft fair season on Saturday. The beginning of the season is always so panicky--so many signs to make! Change to aquire! Where's the duct tape? The last-minute panic hasn't yet set in, so today was mostly spent making felt cake--

--in large numbers:

Pimping the EZ-UP:

And no, we're also not talking about the sudden rainstorm that's occuring right now on said EZ-Up before the paint can cure. Just swear a few times inside your head for me.

And, of course, if I'M going to spray paint, then so must the child:

The other child was napping, after having screamed the entire walk home from Chocolate Moose about her skinned side. The second that we got home and I put a Band-aid on the skinned side, it was miraculously all better and she stopped screaming. I did not smack her.

And when Matt got home from work and saw that I was NOT lying down with my foot elevated, but instead SPRAY-PAINTING THE EZ-UP and LETTING THE CHILD SPRAY-PAINT and LETTING THE OTHER CHILD NAP IN THE LATE AFTERNOON SO THAT SHE WON'T GO TO SLEEP TONIGHT he didn't smack me, either. In fact, he brought home pizza (such act is entitled "Cooking Dinner on the Nights When Julie Doesn't Cook") AND helped me finish spray-painting AND took a photo of me looking all happy and relaxed:

Wait until he sees how many craft fair signs I need him to design for me tomorrow...