Matboard Stencil Tutorial, IF You Have a Cricut (Sorry)

You betcha stencils are important in Montessori education. Stencils allow for the precise reproduction of shapes whose forms should be internalized--not so much letters or numbers, which children must learn to recognize in a variety of scripts, but geometric figures, for instance, whose degrees and angles remain consistent. The premise lends itself well to my idea to make stencils of each of the fifty states: precise reproductions of consistent forms that the girls would do well to memorize.

Montessori stencils are generally made of metal, and are expensive. Metal, of course, is a logical material for a Montessori stencil. Montessori philosophy avoids the use of plastics, but a paper or cardboard stencil not only wouldn't be nearly capable of withstanding average wear, but it also wouldn't have the kind of high, very stiff edge that gives support to the child's pencil without becoming worn down over time.

Expensive, though...yeah. I'm saving up for a microscope for the girls, and I wouldn't dream of buying stencils. Good thing that I own a Cricut! I've used my Cricut to make everything from paper dolls to patches on my pants to felt board figures--pretty much everything EXCEPT scrapbooking.

Even on the Cricut, cutting matboard is a stretch. But with a little more effort you can make a perfect stencil, and matboard is the perfect material. It's very stiff and very sturdy, yet inexpensive, recyclable, and doesn't require so much fussing that if you wreck a stencil you feel angst about tossing it and trying again.

To make a matboard stencil, you will need:

• Cricut with the cartridge that you want. I'm using the 50 States cartridge to gradually make the girls an entire set of 50 states stencils. Any kind of geometric shape would also be very fun and useful.
• Cricut deep cut blade and deep cut blade housing. It's VERY easy to switch these out on your Cricut.
• matboard pre-cut to the appropriate size. I cut my matboards to approximately 8"x10", with the stencil being at least an inch smaller on all sides than the matboard that contains it.
• X-acto knife and self-healing cutting mat.

1. Install your deep cut blade and deep cut blade housing, and set it to its deepest cut. Then, set the Cricut's pressure dial to almost its highest point, and the speed dial to around the midpoint, if not a little slower.

2. Press the matboard face-up on the sticky mat, and load it into the Cricut. Manually set the paper size as a little smaller than the real size of your matboard, to prevent the Cricut from cutting the stencil too close to the edge of the matboard. Remember this exact paper size, however.

3. Set the size of your shape so that it is at least an inch smaller on its widest side than the size of your matboard.

4. Turn on the multi-cut function.

5. After the Cricut finishes its cuts, re-set the paper size exactly the way you did in step four, and re-cut the stencil, again using the multi-cut function.

6. Unload the mat and, using the x-acto knife, finish cutting out the last little bits that didn't completely cut in the Cricut.

And then you're done!

Now go tag somebody's building with Kentucky.

Raw Wool, 1/4 Fleece

Guess what I bought at the Ann Arbor farmer's market yesterday?

It has grass and twigs in it, and smells like sheep. The girls and I are going to have a blast this summer.

A Big Reunion for the Little Girl

She put on her favorite party clothes:

She wrote her name on her nametag so that all her former nurses and neonatologists could remember her:

Her father showed her an incubator like the one that kept her own life safe:

She got her face painted--

--like a purple pony, which was just what she requested:

She ate lots of party food:

She played lots of party games:

She did the bubble dance with her sister:

And she reminded us once again, as she reminds us daily, that we are very, VERY lucky people:

I hope that you had a lucky day today, too.

Tutorial: Coffee Filter Tie-Dye (Sorta)

I've mentioned before that my Papa's house contains all kinds of bulk goodies that my house doesn't--white flour, cake mixes, paper towels, paper plates, paper cups, etc. The girls would add to this list pudding cups, Pringles, Cheez Its, American cheese, cream soda, Reese's Cups, Wonder bread, etc., etc., until I tear my hair out, but let's stick to my list so that my shoulders don't get all tense, shall we? Mmmkay.

So even though we try to be pretty eco-friendly in our crafting at home, when we're at Papa's house we can experiment with perhaps some crafting projects that I've been tempted by in my various readings but that call for ingredients that I'm not comfortable buying. Papa's house was where I first made play dough, which calls for white flour, and now I actually own a stock of cheap white flour that I use just for crafting. I also made my first rainbow cake experiments there, and you all know that I am now the rainbow cake queen of the universe.

Guess what? Papa also owns coffee filters, and I have been wanting to try this wet marker tie dye project for FOREVER. And it turns out that it IS awesome, so you do it, too. Here's what you need:

• 
  
  coffee filter
• 
  
  markers, but probably not the washable kind

• 
  
  water
• 
  
  eye dropper or spritzer or, as we did, a fingertip to dip and then shake

1. Flatten out the coffee filter with your hand, then color a big, bold picture in it with your markers. Don't bother for anything too elaborate, but feel free to be super-colorful:

2. Drip or spritz water lightly over the entire surface of the filter, taking your time so that you can enjoy the sight of the ink running and spreading and mixing. This is the same concept that we'll use when we revisit coffee filter chromatography in a couple of weeks (on account of I put some of Papa's coffee filters in my suitcase--thanks, Papa!). Put a paper towel (shout-out!) underneath the filter to catch any ink that washes completely out of the filter, and keep in mind that if you pour on too much water, the ink WILL wash out completely. You'll have a pretty and colorful paper towel then, I suppose

3. Lay your coffee filter flat to dry, then enjoy!

Did I mention that Papa's house also has all the popsicles that you can eat?

Horses! Horses! Horses!

Kentucky Horse Park? Has a lot of horses.

Lots of different breeds of horses, with their riders dressed in appropriate costumes:

Although this rider, during the horse-and-rider meet-and-greet after this show, did respond to my eager nerd questions about her bareback riding of her Appaloosa by smiling, putting her finger to her lips, then lifting up her saddle blanket to show me the real saddle hidden underneath.

The saddle set-up on this Frisian doesn't look authentically medieval, either, but there was JOUSTING!!!

JOUSTING!!! Five points if you knew before this very moment that I have a master's degree in English with an emphasis in medieval studies.

I mistakenly brought only my telephoto lens, assuming that all the horses would be in pastures or shows and thus far away. I regretted this for the entire day, as we were invited over and over again to pat draft horses, carriage, horses, saddle horses, and show horses. A trainer walking by with a horse, if one of the girls showed the slightest interest (and of COURSE they did), would invariably stop and encourage the girls to pat that horse, while gamely engaging in horsey nerd-talk with me. I now know several very interesting things about horses, from the reasoning behind giving draft horses very short names to the fact that if a thoroughbred is retired to breed and it turns out that he's sterile, he gets infertility treatments.

The Kentucky Horse Park is also a working establishment, not just a tourist destination, and we were welcome to walk down to the arena area and watch this dressage competition:

It was a hot, sticky, horse-filled, day, wrapped up by a trip to the gift shop for horse trading cards and postcards.

In other words, it was horse heaven:

 The early bedtime that night didn't hurt, either.

The Monkey Bars on our To-Do List

It's long been a goal to put some hard-core playground equipment down in the basement playroom, so the girls and I were all three pretty excited to see these hard-core mini monkeybars at the Arkansas Museum of Discovery in Little Rock:

Definitely buildable.

P.S. Check out my weekend blog posts over at Crafting a Green World--a tutorial for oven-bake salt dough, and a step-by-step tutorial for DIY postcards.

Mud Island, and the Miniature Mississippi

One of the most amazing things that I've ever seen while traveling is the Mud Island River Walk. It's a five-block-long scale model of the Mississippi River, made with reference to topographical maps, where 30" equals one mile and granite ridges measure depth in 5' increments.

Oh, and you can wade in it:

A few of the biggest cities along the Mississippi are also mapped to scale, including New Orleans, and looking at New Orleans topographically and the Gulf of Mexico, which is represented by a paddle-boat pond...yeah, it seems obvious in hindsight. The girls didn't care about New Orleans, but they did really enjoy that the representations of all the biggest cities along the Mississippi also included the city bridges across the Mississippi: 

It was the perfect weather for running and jumping and playing and exploring, and I'm pretty sure that some geography got mixed in there somewhere, too:

VERY IMPORTANT: When you go wading, don't forget to hold your dress up out of the water: 

Otherwise it might get wet, and then you'd be embarrassed.