:: this moment ::

:: this moment ::  A photo from the week. Not too many words. A simple moment, extraordinary, special. Something I want to remember, cherish, to pause over. If you have a "moment" leave a link in the comments for others to find and share.


inspired by soulemama.

Project :: coffee cozy

I found and read through a blog a couple of weeks ago, house on hill road. Lovely. Fun. Inspiring. Wish I had more time in the day, kind of blog.

But when #3's soccer season ended this week I knew just what I wanted to give his coach as a thank you.

Here's the instructions and pattern. So easy. Even when I was sure I'd done the elastic wrong it turned out alright. Fabric is some awesome stuff in my stash I got from my mother...I have scraps of the whole line that I'm working into a quilt for a family member who got married (I can't really say recently got married anymore either...they may be waiting awhile for their wedding gift quilt...).

Soccer coach was on a trip and missed the last session so her coffee cozy and gift card are waiting on her desk.

:: Yarn Along ::

Another week with the yarn over.


Ginny, over at small things, has a great idea going. A single photo of a current knitting or crocheting project with a current read. I thought this was great! I read...a lot. And I knit...not as much as I'd like but I do have 2-4 projects going either on the needles or in my brain.

This is my knitting and book that I keep in my little league box. Last year I made dishrags for Christmas gifts for my mom and mother-in-law. I'm wanting to try out a pattern for another possible useable gift for this year...maybe not only for them... I spent a long time on ravelry searching patterns. Saved quite a few and trying them out. I've started this one with some left over cotton yarn, colors and yardage when I settle on a pattern to use for sure.

I've thrown The Read-Aloud Handbook into the box as well. I heard about this book on BlogSheWrote's site. I'm loving the reading aloud we're doing this year. And reading aloud is going better than ever before but I was hoping to get some more pointers and knowledge to make this time of our day even better. The book also has a book list so I'm hoping for some new read-aloud ideas.

What are you knitting (or crocheting...or crafting)? What are you reading? Leave a comment.

History is Alive :: Volcano of Medes and Thera

I saw this post languishing around in my lists of posts, figured I should finish it!

Our history hit on how the island of Crete's people just suddenly stopped thriving there. How they moved on and the record of the Medes stops. The theory being that a eruption of the volcano in Thera caused the air, soil and water to harm the islands and the people left.

We also touched on Atlantis and Plato.

Of course we needed to make a volcano. I didn't have my stuff together well enough for the kids to make the actual structure. I cut down the bottle I had so the little bit of clay I had would fit around it. As the clay dried there were big gaps and cracks but that just gives it character, right? I got out the paint and mixed up some brown and let each kid have a turn painting it. 

Love his costume and his tongue sticking out...

When that was dry I got out the book and all the necessary ingredients.

By the way, that's a different costume on the same kid in the background...

I poured everything together and really...it exploded! The kids thought it was great. It oozed and put on a great show; getting our books, pencils and papers all gooey. I wished I had gotten a picture of it "going" but I wasn't quick enough.

Rowing :: Blueberries for Sal

We rowed Blueberries for Sal this week. What a great book! I had never read it before and LOVED it! (Now I understand Soulemama's title for blueberry picking last summer.) Little Sal goes blueberry picking with her mother which is something my kids are very familiar with and gets all mixed up with another mother and child who are also at Blueberry Hill. Both boys told me when we did their narration about everybody being all mixed up - so that part must have stuck.

Scrapbooking ::


Since we couldn't go blueberry picking right now I thought it would be fun to make scrapbook pages of pictures from last year's trip. I printed some of the general photos for each boy and printed ones of themselves so their pages would be just them and would be a little different. I got out my personal trimmer, and though it drove me crazy, let them trim their own photos. I put adhesive on the back of each picture and let them place them where ever they wanted to on a 12x12 piece of paper. They had a great time with this and felt proud of their pages.

Math :: 


I printed off the Math Mat activity from homeschool share. We didn't "pick" the berries but the boys both liked this. #2 helped #4 as this was a little over his ability and #3 had it a little easy but they enjoyed the activity.

Playdough ::

I made blue play dough. Using this recipe. I used berry kool-aid for the coloring...gave it a GREAT smell as well!

The *best* thing about play dough? They were busy for over an hour! I took this photo while #1 and #2 got their math and grammar done...still playing, getting along and happy. (Don't mind the kitchen...)

Food ::

One thing I found for this book was bringing in some food to tie in. And that was fun. Of course we had frozen blueberries with lunch on Monday. Freezing is my preferred method for saving our blueberries each year though I am thinking a batch of blueberry jam is necessary this year. 

On Wednesday we had some blueberry jell-o. A huge hit!

And on Friday while we read our book we tried dried blueberries. Only the baby liked those. I'm not too heart broken...I don't have a good way to dehydrate berries and they are over $9/pound at the store! 

The dried berries did provide us a great way to talk about all the different ways of preserving food to last for winter. Our method of freezing, Little Sal's mom who cans her berries and Little Bear's mom who eats the berries to store for winter and the store's way of drying the berries. A little bit of real life learning and a little bit of hibernation discussion.

Art ::


Of course, no unit on Blueberries for Sal would be complete without some blueberry painting. I drew a quick bush shape on the papers and invited them to color the bush while I got out the paint. I gave them each a little bit of blue paint and a unsharpened pencil. Showed them how by using the ereaser the blue paint would look like a berry. I think the different method was fun but a little frustrating. They had to be more controlled and couldn't just smear paint around. #4 lost interest more quickly since he didn't have enough paint nor a brush that would allow him to just spread paint over they entire page. #3 was very systematic about his blueberry placement and was very proud of his finished work.

I had gotten this book as an audio book as well from the library so they listened to it while they painted.

Links ::

delightful learning - I got SO many ideas from her!

counting coconuts - play dough recipe

homeschool share - math mat

Linking to:
 

:: this moment ::

:: this moment ::  A photo from the week. Not too many words. A simple moment, extraordinary, special. Something I want to remember, cherish, to pause over. If you have a "moment" leave a link in the comments for others to find and share.


inspired by soulemama.

The group sibling gift

I shared awhile back about the sweet sibling gifts that have started around here for each birthday. I'm loving this new tradition and want to encourage the thoughtfulness and caring that they each put into their gift. That said, with #5 celebrating his 1st birthday I was a little aprehensive about the time I would have to devot to the gifts. Usually there is only 1 or 2 kids who are "into" gift making. I can handle an extra craft or two. But I knew all 4 would be wanting to create something for their little brother and I didn't think I was up for 4 different craft projects with 4 different "bosses" wanting help and supplies.

So I brought up to the group an idea of doing a gift together. Each getting to decorate a fabric panel and I would put them together in a love-y style quilt. Not big enough to be an actual quilt but just right to be carried, snuggled with, cherished as a gift from his siblings.

During morning nap at then end of circle time we got out the supplies and set to work. The lovely thing about creating for a baby is the abiltity to do it right in front of them so when #5 woke up there was no stress about ruining the surprise.

#2 was having a challenging day so his chair looked like this for a lot of our creating time.

We've been dealing with a lot of copying of artist work around here. As we started our project #1 asked how many letters were in the alphabet and with that figured out had decided on a design that involved letter blocks stacked up in a pile. Wouldn't you know it that #2 started on the same design as soon as he got supplies. To avoid WWIII I turned his square into a truck and told him to figure out another design. While avoiding a huge blow-up between kids I created hurt feelings with #2. So he spent a lot of time being upset.

In the end he was able to pull together a design all his own that he was very excited about. And everyone else was proud of the work they did.

Of course we traced the alligator, then he added the alligator hunter with mohawk and ax and the big net.

Again #4's drawing came with explict directions that it said "a brown boat".

Baby was thrilled with his gift from the siblings!

I didn't take any photos of the complete gift all laid out, but it is loved. I grabbed a bunch of 2 inch pieces from my scrap bags, sewed them together and sewed the long strip that made between panels, trying for a scrappy not uniform look. I just made a quilt sandwich out of stash pieces my mom had given me. There was enough of the Clifford fabric for the back and the binding. I even put it back through the machine to quilt around each panel, sewed the binding on the front and finished on the back by hand the next couple of nights. Getting the top together and quilted took about an hour one evening then the binding was two nights in front of American Idol.