The Mommy Blogger Olympics

Look, somebody voted for me besides me!

I have to admit that I love these mommy blog contests, like this current one: the Parents Magazine Best Blog Awards. I'm in the running for Best Craft for Kids Blog (well, as in the running as one can be with two votes!). I don't even know what the prize is supposed to be, but I'm a writer--we LOVE to be read, we love to be read more than we love to write, some of us, and votes and accolades...well, my goodness, that must mean that one is being read, mustn't it?

Voting runs through the middle of October, so there's plenty of time to vote for me, or better yet, nominate your own blog! Or the blog of someone you love! And if you get one more vote than the one that you voted, well, then you win!

Montessori Mapwork, Now Poster-Sized!

How do you make a good thing better?

Supersize it!

The girls enjoy doing Montessori mapwork projects regularly, but in order to get a little more context into the activity, I upgraded the size of our canvas:

Each kid still colors a map of her chosen area, but then I give her a poster-sized sheet of Strathmore drawing paper and a glue stick, and she gets to glue her map onto the poster, and then add on other images around it to provide context. Some of the images, like the Ancient Egypt labels that Willow's placing onto her mapwork of Egypt, are from printables that I've collected online here and there (remind me someday to show you my organized library of homeschool printables, stored on my external hard drive), other images are from my stash of cutter texts--old National Geographics, out-dated travel guidebooks, etc.--and some images the kiddo draws for herself, such as the Great Pyramid of Khufu that Will is putting onto her poster, sand brick by painstaking sand brick:

I also show the girls where their chosen area is on our globe, and I do expect them to remember it (Will more so than Sydney, obviously), and when the girls have finished their posters, we always hang them up in a prominent position in the living room for a while:

Will actually references her Egypt poster occasionally, since Ancient Egypt is one of her current areas of interest and so she's always playing some online game or other (always gotten to from my Little Pumpkinbear Links) in which she needs to know the sons of Horus or what was contained in which coptic jar or whatever. Even Syd, who can't yet pick out any of her locations on the globe independently, can tell you all kinds of things about which animals live in Africa, and Indiana, and South America.

So there you go.

Battle of the Home-Sewn Shorts: Vintage Simplicity 2742 Pajama Shorts

I know, I have a thing for sewing pajama bottoms. They're just so comfy! I mean, wouldn't you live in pajama bottoms day and night if you could? And my kids can!

Seriously, it's nothing but living the dream over here, all day every day.

As far as comfy and cute goes, I still really like the shorts I made from the Oliver + S Bedtime Story Pajamas pattern. However, they don't have pockets, and my kid, she doesn't carry a purse--she needs some clothes with pockets!

So, I sewed Willow another pair of shorts, this time using a vintage Simplicity 2742 It's So Easy sewing pattern for children's pajamas:

This pattern included a cutting line to turn the pants into shorts, which I appreciated, especially because the length is unisex, and thus not too short (is it just me, or are most store-bought little girls' shorts way too short?).

Yes, we ate pizza at the park for lunch. Did I mention that our kitchen is being remodeled?

Unlike Syd, who couldn't give a flying flip about whether or not her clothes are comfortable for active play (she does the monkey bars in a tiered calf-length skirt and two-inch acrylic heels), Willow needs clothes that are roomy and comfortable and allow her full range of motion. These shorts are definitely roomy and comfy:

I know somebody will ask, so I'll just admit it--yes, I painted Sydney's face in tiger stripes using oil pastel crayons, per her request.

I love the pockets in these shorts, but for a pattern labeled It's So Easy, this was surprisingly tricky to sew. There's one point in particular, after you've sewn the inseams of the pants but not sewn the legs shut, in which the instructions do not mention that you need to turn the whole project 90 degrees before you begin the next step--since you're just looking at four nearly identical pieces of fabric, all sewn together in the middle, this fact is by no means obvious, and I only happened to notice it before actually beginning the next step because I happened to notice that the pocket markings, there for a later step, looked like they were in the wrong spot. That's something that anybody of any skill level could miss, and so...yikes!

And although the length is spot-on, these shorts are almost too roomy. I'm not sure how on board I am with the tendency to have gigantically wide waists on children's clothes, that are simply cinched in with appropriately-sized elastic. Since I'm sewing these near the end of summer, however, and thus the shorts are less likely to end up as trashed as the rest of Willow's clothes, perhaps I'll appreciate the ability to switch out the elastic next year to her new waist size so that she can wear them longer.

As for Willow's opinion...

She can ride her scooter in them. The seams aren't scratchy. They don't have buttons. They do have pockets. She's sold.

Modeling Marzipan (with the Kids!)

I originally bought a package of marzipan back before Willow's ocean party, thinking that I would use it to model some edible decorations for her birthday cake.

That did not happen (I may have taken a nap instead), but in the process of moving everything from the kitchen cabinets to some temporary shelves in the living room (who has two thumbs and is getting her kitchen re-done?), Willow discovered this package of marzipan, read the label, discovered how AWESOME the whole thing sounded, and asked to do it.

The whole process of marzipan modeling is actually really easy, and very satisfying and kid-friendly, since marzipan takes dye like a champion and it's super-soft to mold but holds its form perfectly. I first cut the log of marzipan into about eight pieces, and I let Willow choose a color for each. Definitely go with professional-quality gel dye here--I've not tried liquid food coloring on marzipan, but I've heard that it can mess with the marzipan's consistency.

Then you have to knead the dye into the marzipan, just like kneading clay:

This is an excellent exercise in patience and fastidiousness, by the way. Will can get a little...wild, shall we say, with food crafting, especially, but it's very important to go wash your hands well between each color, so that you don't contaminate the next color that you use, and I was pleased to see how conscientiously she did that, without even having to be reminded, for the most part.

Aren't they just gorgeous? The colors are perfect!

Now you can begin to create whatever you want with your marzipan. I explained to the girls that marzipan is more like FIMO than play dough--they're used to crafting giant sculptures with play dough, of which I have an unlimited supply, and small sculptures with FIMO, of which I usually only have a small amount, so this prepared them for the size of sculptures that would work best with what we had.

Other than that prep work, I just stood by and watched, amazed, as they had a fabulous time creating:

The girls did a wonderful job avoiding cross-contamination by not touching anything other than the marzipan as they worked, and washing their hands often, so I was perfectly fine with the inevitable ultimate fate of all those gorgeous, elaborate, colorful, beloved marzipan creations:

And that was their morning snack!

We used:

Letters to the Grandparents

Syd prefers to dictate her letters to me. I write them, a sentence or two at a time, onto one of our lined dry erase boards (one of my best homeschool purchases, by the way), and then she copies them onto regular notebook paper:

I'm impressed that her fine motor skills are advanced enough to allow her to use regular notebook paper. Will, who's nearly two years older (but also dislikes writing by hand), still requires the extremely wide-ruled handwriting paper that Syd would probably be asked to use if she was enrolled in someone's else's kindergarten.

Although I write out Syd's letters as she dictates them, I have NO responsibility for their content:

Willow prefers to type hers (thanks to that typing study!), using invented spelling and her favorite fanciful font:

As for me, I'm a handmade card with a note inside kind of gal:

At least I don't ask for giant ponies.

Yet.

Tutorial: School Glue in Many Homemade Hues

You will be unsurprised to learn that we go through a LOT of glue around here. I try to buy the kids' glue only during back-to-school sales, when they're vastly cheaper than at other times, and I probably shop the back-to-school sales flyers even more avidly than the most penny-pinching parent of an institutionally-schooled kid, because whereas that parent might purchase one six-pack of Elmer's glue sticks for a dollar, I purchase ten of them.

The glue sticks give me agonies because of their plastic waste, but I still stock up because they're the best glue for all the daily little paper projects that the girls do, and they WILL go through 60 glue sticks in 12 months, I heartily assure you. I did better with the bottles of white school glue that I bought last year--I bought a dozen or so bottles (at a quarter apiece!) AND a gallon of Elmer's at the local office supply store. I took care of the small bottles, refilled them from the gallon jug as needed (as well as pulling from the gallon jug when I need glue for projects like gak and shaving cream puff paint), and did not need to purchase any new ones this year.

I over-purchased on the bottles last year (honestly, I DO know that even two children cannot each use six bottles of glue at the same time, three per hand) because I wasn't sure how durable they'd be for frequent refilling--those orange caps do break--but now that I've still got them, it's been in the back of my mind to do something fun with the extra bottles, to get them out of the glue bin and into the art rotation. I was thinking glitter glue, or perhaps tempera paint thickened with a little cornstarch, but finding this black glue and watercolor resist tutorial on the Pink and Green Mama blog was like some kind of personal jackpot for me.

I set out ten or so bottles of Elmer's glue--

--and let Syd pick out whatever colors she wanted from our collection of acrylic paints, then unscrew the cap of each bottle and squirt a couple of big squirts of one color into each bottle:

With that done, we reverted back to the black glue tutorial by shakeshakeshaking each glue bottle to mix the paint and glue together, then getting out the Strathmore watercolor paper to play with it all:

The watercolor paper is a nice choice because after the glue dries you can then add watercolors to your art, of course--

--although Syd found markers and colored pencils just as fun to work with on top of the glue.

My favorite part of this dyed glue is that it dries puffy, like the shaving cream + glue puff paint that the girls and I create sometimes, but unlike the shaving cream puff paint, this glue paint can live happily in its glue bottle on the girls' art shelves, to be taken down anytime they desire to make a little more art.

P.S. Do you love messy kid crafts? You might love my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Coral Reef Sketching

So the chores list has evolved again. Instead of a schedule so much, I changed it to more of a list, with the same number, roughly, of chores and schoolwork activities on it (although that will soon alter, as well, since Matt's about to deem the children the official Daily Cat Litter Scoopers, as soon as he does a few days of litter scooping lessons).

After debating for quite a while, I also tied it to their allowance, in that completing the list of chores earns each child one dollar in her hand, and one dollar put away to save for Walt Disney World (do not even get me started about this, please). It's not an ideal solution to the allowance situation, but 1) I wanted the girls to perform work in exchange for their money (mean Momma, I know), 2) they don't care enough about money to do extra work to earn it, and 3) I want them to have money regularly, so that they can experience saving and spending it (and so I can have a good reason to tell them to stop griping for stuff in stores), so I needed to tie it to work that they were already expected to do, basically. If they ever get motivated enough to complete their entire responsibilities list every single day I may have to rework the system, because that's more cash than I'm willing to put out, but for now it works well.

Each child can complete her list at her leisure, coming to me when she wants to do a project that requires an adult's help, but if she takes longer than one day to finish all her responsibilities (and she does), then on the second day and thereafter she can no longer have access to her media entertainment--no computer, no TV choice, no music or audiobooks. She can still play pretend ponies for four hours at a time, for example, but no Usborne Quicklinks.

The girls can still choose to add their own things that they want to do to the list, of course, but we're on a tight budget, so they can't add something like getting ice cream or going out to eat, for example, but the Wonderlab, the public library, and playing Quirkle are all fair game.

The last change that I've made is that although I still assign projects for Syd to do with me or ask her for suggestions or give her choices, Will is now responsible enough to choose her own schoolwork subjects each day, and think of a project that she can do on that subject, and complete it with or without my help, as necessary. So when she added "coral reef sketching" to her list, she helped me clear the living room table to use as a workspace, got out the crayons while I got out the drawing paper (mental note: need more drawing paper), did a Google Image search with my supervision, chose the coral reef images that she wanted to copy, and got down to work:

Syd, of course, is not to be left out of any activity. She sat down and chose to sketch her toy cat:

A masterful representation, don't you agree?

Will created at least a dozen different sketches of different coral reef scenes that she found via Google Images. I was surprised, however, to see how impressionistic each one is. This, for example, is a reef scene that includes a starfish:

This one included a large brain coral and a school of colorful fish:

Each image that she drew from was teeming with color and life, and so it's fascinating to me to see how she distills each one:

Although I recorded this activity under Science and Art in Will's records (the requirement for record-keeping isn't clearly laid out in Indiana law, but I do know of one couple who went through a lot of very upsetting hassle because of their lack of records, so I keep them), it's one of those projects that is so clearly her own that I really don't know what she got out of it, exactly. It would be easy to look at these drawings and think that she'd just put in the bare minimum of effort, but I saw her carefully select each image to copy, study it thoroughly, concentrate on every line in her drawing, and most importantly, I saw how proud she was of every finished sketch--clearly they are masterpieces in her eyes, and therefore they're clearly masterpieces in my eyes, as well.

It's one of those projects that helps remind me how important it is for my children to own their own educations. If Will hadn't completely owned this entire coral reef sketching project, from start to finish, how would it have ever come to be?