If at First You Don't Succeed...

On Recital Day this week, Will was ready to perform "Mary Had a Little Lamb"...nearly:

Take 1

Take 2

Take 3!

The kiddo seems really engaged with her music these days, happily practicing her lesson during our morning Memory Work time, and also goofing around with the recorder, which is sort of my personal hallmark of whether or not one of my kids enjoys something. This week she's learning the rest of the notes to make an entire octave (I print out these soprano recorder fingerings, and have Willow cut out the relevant ones to study and paste them into her school notebook), and then we'll have several other songs to learn before we move into the world of sharps and flats. 

And then, in a couple of months... violin?

DIY Dinosaur Birthday Party Invitations

It's birthday party season! We've got one dragon-themed ninth birthday party coming up in a do-able two months, and one dinosaur-themed seventh birthday party coming up in--gasp!--two days!!!

At this point, I should probably be concerned with cutesie games and activities and party favors, but what I'm REALLY concerned about is mowing the lawn, making a sign to warn people not to lean against the bathroom sink that is duct-taped to the wall, and...

Nope, that's about it. A lawn with grass that isn't a foot high and a sink that doesn't crash down on top of a kid. Those are my priorities.

Priorities or not, children do have to be informed that there is a party happening, to which their attendance is requested, so we did manage to get invitations made and distributed last week. The fact that this was accomplished by me unashamedly setting the task up as an assignment on a school day, well...

Eh, it is what it is. Sometimes you make birthday party invitations at school.

The invitations were postcards; Matt designed one half of one side to contain the party invitation--

--left the other half blank for the address, and on the flip side the girls each took half the postcards and drew a dinosaur scene on each one:

My Will is pretty studious these days, taking a lot of pleasure in intellect-driven pursuits. She's taken it upon herself to keep a daily journal of our chicks, for instance, and to weigh them every day, and when creating her postcard illustrations, she got out a dinosaur encyclopedia, because she knew exactly what dinosaurs she wanted to draw, and she wanted to get each one just right:

I've noticed that Will has lately become studious in other areas, too. She still throws the occasional fit about an assignment or chore and must be sent to bed for eight minutes, but she's taken complete charge of the daily welfare of our chicks, cleaning their water dish and freshening their bedding several times a day, unasked, sat through loads of sister dress rehearsals and recital business without fuss, and when I asked her this morning if she could be the one to help set up Sydney's birthday party with me this weekend (It's sort of a surprise party, so Matt's job is to keep Sydney out of the house that day), I had almost expected her to say no, or to ask if she could be out with Matt and Syd instead, but not only did she say yes right away, but she was excited at the prospect of helping with the food and decorations and set-up.

If this is what nine is going to be like, then I am all in!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Handmade Looms and a Rock Star Dress (and Four New Babies, Too)

a round-up of handmade looms crafted from upcycled materials

and a review of the Cool Water dress from Sew Pretty: T-Shirt Dresses

I messed up the distance between the upper black and white ruffle and the pink skulls ruffle--I'm not going to  try to fix it, but it did cause me to see that the dress with only two ruffles would be a pretty cool top. Mod to come:

In other news, I took a deep breath, gathered some supplies, put Matt to work with a box knife and plenty of duct tape, and accepted the generosity of a good friend in her gift of four of her recently-hatched chicks:

We can keep up to five hens in our yard, but really I only want two or three, so hopefully one or two, but not all four, of these babies will be boys, because I don't know how we'll stand to choose which ones to give back to my friend, otherwise.

Because we LOVE these chicks. LOVE. THEM. Especially Fluffball:

Fluffball is some kind of chicken genius, I swear. Willow is all the time catching potato bugs (I pay her a penny for each bug she picks out of my garden, payable upon the dollar) and dropping them into the chicks' brooder, and so far only Fluffball has figured out the utter awesomeness of these bugs. She'll run up right away and start grabbing them up, and then the other chicks will get excited because she's excited, so they'll chase her around with a bug in her mouth and try to get it from her, but in the rare instances that they actually do, they just stare at the bug and they're all, "What's the hell is THIS thing?!?", but in that time Fluffball has managed to grab another bug, which gets the chicks all excited because she's excited, so they'll chase her around with a bug in her mouth.

Fluffball can also roost on the rock that we've got in there for some chick enrichment, and she can jump off of your hand if you put it super low to the ground, and once Sydney had her outside of her brooder on the floor with her, and she saw an ant crawling by, and she ate it!

Of course, we love Arrow, Crow, and Cluck, too. But it's nice to know that they've got a chicken genius like Fluffball to show them what's what.

Magnets and Electricity and Play

What to do with a short school week following a long weekend that had both a grandparents' visit and a fashion show performance in it, and immediately prior to a ballet recital weekend?

We called this "project week," and we just went with it!

I strongly felt that both girls needed a relaxing week between two such full and stressful weekends (at least fashions shows and ballet recitals are stressful for ME!), so instead of regular school, with five subjects a day  and a list of assignments to complete and check off, every morning we took a tour through our house, and I reminded them of the [possibly absurd] number of activity books, kits, manipulatives, and games that we have everywhere, and that typically get ignored in favor of toy ponies, dolls, colored pencils, and the ipad. I asked them to fill some of their time with some of these choices, and I engaged with them while they played, helped with ready reference, pulled up related songs and videos and activities, and sometimes just hung out for the company.

Seriously, though, our ignored kids' stuff stash is ridiculous. In the living room we've got games like Settlers of Catan, Apples to Apples, Scrabble, Monopoly, and Quirkle. In the girls' bedroom they've got kits to make mosaics, model airplanes, a wooden catapult, plaster models of skeletons and volcanoes, and kid-painted toy animals. In the study there are paint-by-number sets, geography puzzles, logic puzzles, supplies for painting and sewing, how-to-draw books, and the microscope. In the basement are tennis rackets, roller blades, a rock tumbler, and woodworking tools. Outside are bicycles, jump ropes, a pogo stick, sand, gardening tools, softball equipment, and basketballs. And that's just what I pointed out on maybe one day.

Once I made it clear that we were going to settle down for a few hours with things that we didn't usually choose, it was fun to see what the girls did choose, and how much they liked it. For instance, Syd found a magnetism and electricity kit that had been a Christmas gift from her grandmother one year, and that I had actually forgotten about in favor of this other truly epic electricity kit that we also own.

But this particular little kit, although simpler, is SIMPLER, you know? Kid-friendly, and easy to put together and experiment with, and she had a fabulous time exploring with it:

We own a lot of magnets from a magnet unit that we did a while back, but it never occurred to me to mine this set for its all new-to-us magnets!

Remembering how poles work: Willow was able to explain this impromptu, but Syd needed the refresher of this play.

After Syd did this with the magnet set and her compass--

--I tried to find a Youtube video of a compass going crazy at the North Pole, but to no avail. Why are North Pole explorers and Arctic scientists not taking time out of their busy days to help me educate my child?!?

The electricity parts of the set were also simple, easy to put together, and with their lights and sirens and fans that you could hook up, they were tempting enough to lure Willow away from the internet-linked encyclopedia that she was exploring and into the play:

It was a happy morning well spent.

Winding Down

our last big to-do of the "school year":

Willow is an absolute saint who has spent a LOT of time sitting in auditoriums waiting for her sister.

a bevy of ballerinas--Syd is the fifth pair of legs from the left, next to the backwards kid

Although we school year-round, this week feels a deliciously lot like winding down for the year. With the spring recital, Saturdays are now free from ballet practice (although replaced by softball). Monday is a school holiday to celebrate a certain little girl's seventh birthday, and the day after that she'll be free to call herself a second grader. Most of the IU students will have left for the summer by then, so we'll have much of town and campus to ourselves. There will be a dinosaur party. We'll be taking a break from our long-standing Story of the World studies to do a unit on the Civil War, in preparation for seeing Gettysburg on our road trip next month.

And we'll be going on some road trips!

The summer will be filled with lots of breaks for road trips and day camps, and lots of math and science and art done en plein air, and lots of hiking and biking, some gardening and some butterfly hatching, and a ninth birthday and a dragon party. 

Are you ready? I'M ready!!!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Natural Food Coloring and Toy Charm Necklaces

a tutorial for charm necklaces made from the kids' small toys

and a review of India Tree food coloring

I'm now trying to no longer bake with our formerly dearly beloved Wilton food coloring, so it's good that Wilton has so many non-food uses, one of which turned out to be a weekend activity, as Matt and I got together in the basement to clean out the chest freezer, only to discover that one of the (many) reasons it was chock-full was that I had, months ago, set some giant ice molds in it to freeze and then forgot about them (or covered them up with whole chickens and hot dog buns). 

In other words...

It's giant colored ice mold time!

First the girls used up all the salt in the house--

--and then this happened:

It belatedly occurred to me that all that salt is probably bad for my shaggy garden. Remind me to blame this when I start complaining that nothing is growing right later this summer--it'll make for a good excuse. 

I Let My Kids Wear Makeup

Despite my own hang-ups about the outward manifestations of gender, the girls both see makeup as another form of art play, and they enjoy it as much as they used to (and still sometimes do) color on themselves with markers, only, since I never bought washable markers, makeup is much easier to wash away at bedtime.

Because I don't want the kids to associate makeup with "looking pretty," it was really important to me to find makeup in full color palettes, not just what's trendy right now. Specifically, Sydney wanted blue lipstick, which I found on etsy, and blue eyeshadow, which in itself wasn't too hard to find, but I also wanted the girls to have green eyeshadow, and orange eyeshadow, and purple and pink and black eyeshadow.

I did finally find excellent color palettes for makeup for the kids. For the eyeshadow, I ended up buying a SHANY eyeshadow palette, which yes, does have blue and green and orange and purple and pink and black. It ended up in the girls' Easter baskets, and I actually used it for the fashion show, too, blending red into pink above the black and silver glitter line that Syd's makeup artist put just above her eyelashes. I also bought the girls a set of eyeliner pencils, which turned out to be really too delicate and fussy for children to use, but I don't use makeup myself, so what do I know? Add to that one blush and all the body glitter that a kid could care to make for herself, and you've got yourself a pretty thorough makeup exploration set!

Although the kids do love to do themselves up like clowns with their makeup, I was feeling at a loss for any technique or tips to provide when they asked, since not only do I not wear makeup currently, but I've also never worn it--I don't even have the tips of a twelve-year-old self to pass on! Fortunately, one of my friends who has a teenage daughter told me that her kiddo, who is great with makeup, spends tons of time watching makeup tutorial videos on Youtube.

What the what?!?

Well, let's check it out!

Seriously, how cute is that? The kiddos do seem to enjoy copying some of the simpler tutorials, and I feel like they have, without making them feel like they have to be conventional, gotten them to have just a little bit lighter of a hand with the application:

Just a little bit, mind you.

And yes, their father and I do patiently sit for makeovers:

Yes, that IS a paintbrush. Only recently have I figured out that you have to buy special makeup brushes separately.

Considering that the girls ALSO have a thing for nail polish in funky colors--

--they are quite the colorful crew these days.