Easter Bags & Easter Buns

Oooo, I took a nice two month hiatus from blogging again . . . and I'd aaaaallllmost made it through the spring. Drat!

We arrived home from D.C. just a day before Easter Sunday, which meant I could keep Easter fairly low-key this year. Luckily, I'd already made and purchased all the goodies for it. No procrastinating here! Gotta keep the anxiety at bay :).

The kids have been needing new church bags for a while, so I made these simple lined tote bags using this awesome tutorial. I love the stuff on Purl Bee. So classy. Then I filled the totes with some churchy things. They each held a notebook, a pencil and pen, a pencil sharpener, a pack of coloring instruments (pencils for Phx, markers for Lutece), a pack of gum, and a book (that was the one non-churchy item).

Aaaaaaaand the Easter baskets held the candy.

Because it's just not Easter without it . . . no matter what anyone tries to tell you.

I thought the hot cross buns were good, but the kids were not as excited by them. Fine. Next year I'm sticking with something more recognizable and easier to make . . . like candy.

Boredom Breeds Creativity

Along with the snow days came lots of indoor activities. Fortunately, the kids are old enough, and (mostly) independent enough, to come up with their own ideas and activities. Lutece decided that a week of no school was a perfect time to hone her crafting skills.

We went to the library and checked out some crafting books, and she got to work. First up on the docket were a couple of duct tape projects, notably, the purse/bag shown above. She still uses it to store all of her sewing projects.

She used a book to get her started on some sewing projects, then she started to create things on her own. A hand warmer (filled with rice . . . you can heat it up in the microwave).

A little stuffy.

She made a couple of these little cats.

Then, when she couldn't find a pattern for a penguin (her favorite), she designed and executed this penguin stuffed animal completely on her own. I love it!

While Lutece was sewing, Phoenix and I got our origami on.

I tried to get Phoenix to help me with his origami valentines, but it was like pulling teeth. I finally just did them on my own. Sigh.

In addition to the crafting, there was baking as well. Seriously, ONE WHOLE WEEK stuck indoors with no school. We definitely needed some sugar cookies to help pass the time.

And not to be forgotten, the key lime pie that the kids begged me to make for Pi day on March 14 (3.1415 . . . get it?). Yup, boredom definitely breeds creativity.

Working Toward Bear

Whew! This has been a flurry of posts! After this one, I'll be all caught up with fall and ready to start posting about the many winter activities we have planned (i.e., Christmas, snow days, New Year, snow days, Pinewood Derby, snow days . . . you get the idea).

Last summer, Phoenix earned his Wolf badge in Cub Scouts, and when he turned nine in September, he moved up to the Bear den.* He has been very engaged with completing goals toward his Bear badge, so we've done lots of activities this fall that somehow relate to Cub Scouts. When he said he wanted to try his hand at building a model, I was all on board. I remember putting together models as a kid and loving it.

So the kids and I went to a hobby shop and picked out two tanks to put together, along with model glue. (Models are more expensive than I remember!) The kids had a good afternoon of it, but a month later we still haven't finished putting on the final touches on their models. Hmm, maybe that's a good activity for tomorrow after Church.

Another fun activity we accomplished for Cub Scouts was visiting the Salato Wildlife Education Center in Frankfort on election day (a day off of school for the kids). We invited some friends, and the kids had a grand ol' time (as did I).

Phoenix and his friend (also a Bear Scout) got to accomplish the "Visit a Nature Preserve" requirement, as well as the "Talk to a Park Ranger about what he/she does," since I dragged them over to the park ranger and forced them to ask him some questions.

The kids especially enjoyed the new Quail exhibit, since they could play in the gigantic quail eggs. I have to tell you, I really enjoy the structure and goal-setting the Scout program provides (as it also works in perfect tandem with Faith in God). Whenever the kids don't know what to do or we are hankering for a new experience, we look in the Scout book and invariably we find something.

* Incidentally, in October I was called as the Cub Scout Committee Chair for our ward, so I have become even more engaged in the Cub Scouting program recently. They didn't release me as Gospel Doctrine teacher, but they did give me a team teacher, so I have the best of both worlds.

Artful Weekends

The kids had a couple of artful weekends as August came to a close . . . the unofficial end to summer. We attended the Woodland Art Festival and enjoyed ourselves somewhat. (One day I will just go without the kids and leisurely walk around the booths reveling in the arts and crafts without having to tell anyone to NOT touch the freakin' art.) The kids saw their favorite artist from last year, and we were so pleased to find that they had brought back our favorite art ladies from the UK Art Museum for kids' crafts. Those ladies rock.

The next Sunday, the kids pulled out the beads and macrame string we bought in China and made some lizards.

Phoenix hisses at me these days when I do something he doesn't like, like taking pictures of him. It's annoying, but I may as well document it.

Then he smiles to himself, pleased with his feral ways. I'm not sure which is more annoying . . . Lutece's frowns or Phoenix's hisses. How do other people get their children to smile for pictures?

Summer Science

As I mentioned in this post, I made several activity lists for the summer, among them a science/nature list, in order to give the kids ideas, direct their activities in constructive ways, and keep things interesting around the house. I wish I could say this always worked, but we still had lots of "Mom, I'm bored. What can we do?"

There were some cool ideas on that science/nature list (make 3D structures using marshmallows and toothpicks, make a wigwam in the backyard, clean coins using different household products to see which ones work best), but alas, they rarely got used. Sigh.

There were a few ideas that the kids DID try though, so all was not lost. They set treasure hunts for each other at the Arboretum using the compass on my iPhone. We took our weekly nature hikes. They took some of their plastic animals around the neighborhood and took photos of them set up in "natural-looking" habitats.

They were also excited to do the old stand-by of GAK.

This time around, they were old enough to do all the measuring and mixing by themselves.

It could have been perfect . . . if only I hadn't been so anxious about their getting the GAK all over the kitchen, the floor, their clothes, etc.

I suppose things rarely turn out how you hope, but the kids definitely enjoyed themselves.

Summer Art Projects

As usual, summer has given the kids ample time to delve into the art closet and get creative. Before summer began, I also made a list of possible art projects* that I thought the kids might enjoy, and since they are now old enough to entertain themselves (theoretically), I simply made the list available and let them pick and choose activities when they were jonesing for something creative.

Lutece noticed the activity called "corn syrup painting" and wanted to try it out. It was pretty easy. Corn syrup and food coloring makes for a bright, gooey, (edible) paint.

The allure being that the "paint" dries shiny and bright. It also dries slightly sticky (tacky). When I found Phoenix licking his painting the next day. They went in the trash.

Corn syrup painting is not the format for delicate art. Lutece's first drawing went in the trash because the areas weren't large enough to paint in. This chunky rainbow worked much better. It was a good ONE time activity.

Another time, the kids chose to make seed bead necklaces. This is not an activity for smaller children. We used clear string (like fishing wire), and pulled out all the beads in my collection.

It was delicate and focused work, and I realized early on that we needed something to draw our attention away from the relative tedium of stringing many small beads, so we put on an audio book we'd been listening to in the car.

It helped considerably, but even so, Phoenix only finished about 1/3 of his necklace (I strung the rest at night). Lutece completed much more, but ultimately I also helped finish hers.

Here are the end products. Phoenix's and Lutece's are in the middle.**

A couple of days later Lutece asked if she could make another necklace. When she showed it to me (about halfway finished), she said with a sneaky smile on her face, "It looks pretty random, huh?" Me: "Uhm, yeah, it does." Indeed, it looked a lot like the unpatterned necklace Phoenix's had made (see above).

Then she excitedly explained that it was a coded necklace. Every bead stood for a letter (she'd created a code key), and the necklace told about her life. Fascinating idea! That's what happens when you visit the International Spy Museum. You start thinking like a spy.***

Really hard to decode without the key though.

There have been so many art projects I didn't capture on film, but the kids have done a LOT of painting this summer. Boxes, wood, paper . . . you name it. Stayc recently made another large wooden shelf for the basement and he suggested that before we load it up with boxes and plastic containers, the kids could paint it.

They loved that idea. Yes, it was messy, and yes, I may have yelled at Phoenix for getting paint all over the floor, himself, his clothing, etc. But hey, all in the name of art, right :)?

* I also made a list of science/nature ideas,  a list of writing ideas, a list of possible books to read, and a general list of ideas/activities/things to do/places to see to do this summer. Needless to say, I refer the kids to these lists a lot.

** As a side note, Phoenix happily wore his necklace on a hike a couple of days ago and toward the end of the hike Lutece commented that it was kind of funny to see a boy wearing a necklace. As soon as I heard her say that my heart sank. I commented that plenty of boys wear necklaces. It is common to see teenage boys wear necklaces, and boys in California where I grew up wear them all the time. Lutece responded, "Too bad you're not a teenage boy from California." Aww, Lutece. Phoenix took off his necklace immediately. When I pulled her aside and told her how sad it made me that she had made Phoenix feel bad about wearing a necklace, she was genuinely sorry. She just hadn't realized it would have that effect. Kids. Sigh.

*** I find it fascinating and revealing how strongly she still identifies with being a triplet. We did spend a morning this summer looking at family pictures on the computer, especially pictures from when the kids were born and were babies, including pictures of Sela and Catalina. That may have jogged her memory as well. 

Phoenix Revisits Thailand

Phoenix had to do a "country report" this year in school. He was torn between China, Thailand, and Mexico (all places we've been together), but in the end he chose Thailand (since two other kids in his class did China). The kids were give six different visual options for their projects, and Phoenix chose to do a diorama of a Thai rainforest. We had a fun time putting it together.

Every day for nearly two weeks he worked for about an hour on a different portion of the project. One day he painted the background forest on paper that we then glued into the diorama box (see top picture).

Another day he created Thai ruins (modeled on Sukhothai) with salt dough, which he then painted "ancient ruin brown" on a different day.

He spent a couple of days creating trees out of paper and then gluing them into the diorama. On a different day, he sifted through his and Lutece's collection of plastic animals to select those ones appropriate for a Thai forest.

He also had a to write a description of the scene, which took him another couple of days. In the end, it turned out fabulous.

When I asked him how his presentation to the class went, he told me that everyone else's descriptions were much shorter than his, so when it came to his turn, he just read the first paragraph and cut out everything else. Everything else? You didn't talk about the elephants or the king cobra or the Buddhist ruins? Nope.

 

However, in addition to the diorama, Phoenix decided early on that he ALSO wanted to do a poster, which turned out to be fun too and hopefully made up for his lack of diorama description (since most of that information was also on the poster). We looked through all of the pictures from our trip to Thailand, and Phoenix chose the ones he wanted to use on his poster. He grouped them into categories about food, animals and nature, religion and Buddhism, and government.

It's so much more fun to do a project on something you've actually experienced for yourself. And seriously, how awesome is it to show off a picture of yourself bathing an elephant in the Mae Ping River or visiting an ancient Buddhist ruin in Si Satchalanai. SO COOL!

p.s. Please do not waste your time telling me that you like Phoenix's hair long. He begged for a haircut for weeks (specifically, a crew cut). It may look cute long, but it is a lot of thick, unruly hair to manage, and he prefers it short.