Thanksgiving themed ratty cage

Purely for my own entertainment, I made the rat girls a cube hammock shaped like a turkey for this week.  I crack myself up.

Someone checked it out right after I let them back into their newly cleaned cage.  (Dixie? Hard to tell without seeing the whole rat.)

Turkey backside, with Roux climbing up on the right hand side.

They prefer napping on TOP of the cube instead of inside.  Figures.  This is Mimi? I think?

That's all 3 piled up on there, and Roux facing the camera.  Mimi is facing the feathers, and Dixie was on the bottom of the pile with her head off to the right (not visible).  

Stop disturbing our nap with your camera, woman.

You can expect Christmas themed cages in the weeks to come.  I figure, why not?!

Crafty Catch Up

Halloween crafting! 

I did an order of some Minion hats for a couple of friends at church and their kiddos.  They dressed eleven boys and one girl (from only 3 families!) all as Minions together.  The big kids had yellow ski caps, but I did crochet hats for the babies and toddlers.   I had to google to find out what a Minion was when they asked me to crochet, though.  I still need to rent the movie! 

Pattern: http://www.etsy.com/listing/81487804/despicable-me-minion-hat-pattern-crochet

I only had to do one costume for my own kids this year.  My sons unanimously voted to be Spidermen, but my little lady wanted wings and feathers to go with the owl hat I did for her last fall.  

 

Rats!

The rest of the crafting I've done lately has been for the rats.  We got a trio of pet rats a few weeks ago. Here was their cage all set up the night before we went to pick them up.  I sewed their hammocks, 

and their snuggle scarf (it helps the kids to handle them without getting scratchy toe nails on their necks or risking a rattie getting loose.

Funny story about this cube hammock.  Hazel had this nasty nightgown that was all stretched out and sad and I told her she had to stop wearing it.  She was so sad!  BUT when I suggested that maybe she let me make something for the rats out of it, she was overjoyed.  Hazel adores the rat girls.  So here it is, beloved froggy nightgown, turned cube hammock.

Wrap Up Catch Up

I fell off the blogging bandwagon, and now I have a few weeks to catch up on!

We finished our row of The Salamander Room with a diorama of Brian's room and a trip to the Insectarium.

Jono, eating a piece of cricket fudge.  Nasty.  He loved it. 

Hazel wasn't so sure. 

Our caterpillars grew and changed! We so enjoyed watching that process.  I want butterfly plants in my yard now!

all four, as chrysalises (is that how you spell that?!)

We fed them oranges until they all emerged, and then we let them all go.  

Here you can see the nasty red juice that squirted out of each chrysalis as the butterfly emerged.  Looked like quite the battle scene in there by the time they all came out to play!

Kids, waiting anxiously for our butterflies to take flight! It took some gentle encouragement in the end. 

After that, we did a unit on The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.  Daddy left town in the middle of this unit for a week, and well... mama lost steam.  We didn't do as much with this book as I had planned, but we enjoyed the story, and our DIY lighthouses were very popular nightlights for a few days.

We went on a field trip with our homeschool group to see a children's concert at the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. It was so fun! They had stations set up with a couple of people to introduce us to the various instruments.  After we cycled through the stations, we got to listen to a short concert with the whole orchestra.  

violins

oboe

full orchestra

Mama and her entourage, after the show

While Daddy was gone, we drew and painted pumpkins, and then took a trip to the super awesome Miss Heather's Pumpkin Patch.  

face painting

"pony" rides

my adorable children!

While Daddy was gone, Grandma and Grandpa came to visit!  They were lucky enough to be in town for a Johnette Downing concert.  Everyone who knows us knows that we LOVE to go hear Ms. Downing's free children's concerts in the French Quarter.  Grandma and Grandpa were excited to get to go along.   Last week's concert was pretty crowded with field trips, but Hazel and Charlie didn't let that stop them from dancing to the Boogie Woogie Jive!

Grandma and Grandpa also took a trip with us to Storyland.  Playing at this park makes me want to go home and read fairy tales.  Or, watch Once Upon a Time. 

And then finally, with Daddy home and grandparents gone, we got back on the school bandwagon with a few day's study on the election.  On Tuesday, we read If I Ran for President, which was definitely the best overview of the election process for this age group that I found.  Then the kids came with me to vote.  On Wednesday, we colored in our US map with dry erase markers to represent election results and discovered that we had re-elected President Obama.

Next up, a unit on Thanksgiving! Thanks for catching up with us!

Pajama Monsters

I saw this pattern and couldn't resist.  Each kiddo now has a Pajama Monster to sit on their bed and eat their day-old pajamas.  They're nice enough to give them back at bedtime for a 2nd night of wear.  Cute, eh? 

Halloween decor

I opened facebook on Thursday morning to find this fun crafty blog post linked by my friend Courtney.   I couldn't resist a little impromptu crafting.  I put school on hold for an hour, dug in my fabric stash until I found some plain white, grabbed my whole box of acrylic and fabric paints, and set to work hand printing the children.

I added googley eyes and drew on the rest of their features,

and turned it into a seasonal throw pillow for the entry way bench!

The kids also got into the spirit and painted some pumpkins this week.  I tried to convince them to use black and orange paints, but no.  This was more fun. ;)

Weekly Wrap Up: October 8-12

Last summer, when I was previewing the Five in a Row curriculum for use in our homeschool this year, I checked out every book that was available in the New Orleans and/or Jefferson Parish libraries that had a unit in FIAR.  I brought them home, read through them, selected the units I wanted to do this year, made notes, etc. I told the kids that the big pile of picture books was "Mommy's research" and I did my best not to read them to them (yet).  There was one story that stands out in my mind from those weeks.  The Salamander Room.  Charlie pulled The Salamander Room out of my research basket and begged me to read it.  I gave in, and the minute I read the last word, he shouted, "Again!" This was a first for us.  We are re-readers.  Like typical preschoolers, my kids enjoy hearing their favorite stories over and over again.  This book was the first in my memory that anyone had wanted to hear read again immediately, though.  It was destined to become a favorite.  Because of that, I had really been looking forward to this unit, and as I expected, it has not disappointed.  

The Salamander Room is about a boy who finds a salamander in the woods and brings him home. He imagines what his new pet would need to be happy in his room.  As he imagines providing an appropriate environment, his room (in the illustrations) is transformed into the forest.  It's a sweet, magical type of story. 

The first thing we did with this book was talk about salamanders, and amphibians in general.  We did a little craft on the life cycle of an amphibian (frog, since no one makes cute printables for the life cycle of a salamander).  My kids can tell you all about how a mama frog lays her eggs in water, the eggs hatch tadpoles, who breathe with gills and swim, how those tadpoles eventually grow legs and lungs, lose their tails, and then live on land as adult frogs.  

We went outside and pretended we were frogs.  The kids hopped from lily pad to lily pad, to show which vowel sound they had heard in the words I called out.  If I called "cat" they jumped to "a" and so on.  Very fun, and an excellent wiggle break.  

I made a sensory bin for the life cycle of a frog.  I put water beads and some frog life cycle toys into it  with a couple of craft foam lily pads.  The kids had a blast playing with them all week long!  

We went to the zoo in search of a salamander.  We found one on the door handle to the snake house!

That ended up being the best one we saw, too, since the only one on display was well hidden.  We saw a portion of his bright yellow and black tail.  We think there's a decent chance of seeing a salamander at the aquarium, where they have tons of frogs, but we haven't made a trek there recently to find out.  

The next day, we had a fun surprise in the mail--caterpillars! We are going to raise and observe the life cycle of some painted lady butterflies.  These caterpillars have more than doubled in length since we got them 3 days ago.  We expect them to begin to pupate next week sometime.  Once they each form their chrysalis, we'll move them into the large mesh butterfly enclosure that came with their kit and wait for them to emerge.  After we've watched them as butterflies for a few days, we'll release them.  So fun!

So that we could learn a little more about our new caterpillars, we read a story about the life cycle of a butterfly, and then made a little craft using pasta and rice.  Our pasta caterpillars formed giant chrysalises because I wasn't specific about what size pasta shells I needed for the project, and my sweet husband did the shopping. ;) This was my first time to dye pasta, which was very easy, and very satisfying.  I want to do more pasta-dying crafts now!

We continue The Salamander Room next week, studying the body parts of an insect, making a diorama of Brian's room, and taking a field trip to the insectarium.  Should be fun! 

Arguably more exciting than any of the above, this week we finished our pre-K reading readiness curriculum!  I can't believe we are actually finished!  I feel so accomplished, and SO proud of the kids.  They are all in a really good place for learning to read now (and some are well on their way, already reading short 3 letter words).  If you have 3-4 year old children, I cannot recommend "Ziggy School" highly enough.  We have loved it.  Don't they look proud?

As always, thanks for reading!