I made a couple more bears for the Mother Bear Project this year. Last year, I had said I wanted this to be an annual tradition, making 3 bears (one in honor of each of my children). This year, I pooped out after the 2nd bear.
The truth? Charity knitting/crocheting is super fun, but this particular pattern is not one I enjoy working up, especially not three times in a row. So I'm reneging on my intent to do bears every year. Let's just say that maybe I'll do some more some day?
Regardless, these two bears are off to some little kids in need of a hug. They go with prayers for comfort and peace!
Before Christmas we spent a week with the Five in a Row book A New Coat for Anna. I just love this book. In it, Anna and her mother barter some of their nice things for the materials they need to have a new coat made for Anna.
We played bartering one morning. Jono was a doctor, Charlie was a dad spiderman with kids, and Hazel was a farmer. Hazel needed some vet care for her cows, but didn't have any money, so she offered Jono some of her fruits and veggies from the farm. Charlie needed milk from Hazel's cows for his children, and offered one of his cat's kittens to chase mice in her barn. We created some other scenarios, too, but they escape my memory at the moment.
In the book, Anna and her mother dye the yarn for her coat red using ligonberries. We dyed some wool yarn with Kool-Aid! Such a fun and simple process.
On our long road trips over Christmas, I knit their yarn into something of their choosing. Charlie chose a hat for him and a matching hat for kitty. Hazel chose the same (haven't done her kitty's yet), and Jono asked for a small stuffed alligator.
We read some wonderful go-along books that had similar plots. I highly recommend:
We also took a trip to the WWII museum here in New Orleans, since Anna takes place in worn-torn Europe after WWII. That museum is amazing, and I can't wait to go back, but I'll go next time without my kids. It was over their heads, which I expected. And while they certainly enjoyed seeing the planes and tanks and things, I felt somewhat disrespectful with my rowdy excited 4 and 5 year olds in such a somber environment. Plus, it was recommended by the curators that we skip the entire 2nd floor due to extremely graphic images in the exhibits on the Asian front of the war. So, note to those thinking about taking children to a war museum. Don't.
I'm sure we did other things with Anna, but frankly, I didn't take good notes and Christmas happened between then and now. That's all I remember, folks! Thanks for reading!
We had an Elf on the Shelf for the first time this year! I had so much fun staging his antics every night after the kids went to bed, and managed to snap a picture of most of them. So, here are the 2012 activities of Gumbo Parade, the elf!
photo graffiti
board games with the reindeer
riding the toy fire truck
sipping syrup
switched out the kids' stockings for their underwear
"snow" angel
weighing himself in the bear balance
pretending to be a pet rat
superhero, zip lining
outfoxed
roasting marshmallows
spelling his name
nativity scene
pirate Gumbo
reading a cat book to the cats
hanging upside down from the mistletoe
hiding among the reindeer
"snowball" fight
"toilet paper"
the last night! he used streamers and tape to trap the kids in their rooms so they couldn't peek at Christmas early!
Christmas morning!
I endured a lot of teasing from my friends about being an Elf on the Shelf overachiever, but really, pinterest makes it EASY. Almost none of these were original ideas. I made a master list of 40 or so ideas from pinterest at the beginning of the month, and then just picked one that would be easy to pull off every night after kids went down. Totally worth it!
A mama in my MOPs group unexpectedly delivered her baby boy at 26 weeks. The thought of any family facing a long hard road in NICU sends me straight for my yarn. It's what I do.
I made three hats for baby Benjamin. One in a size that will fit now, one a little bigger and one even a little bigger than that. The largest size is the size I usually make for preemies when I do my big stash to celebrate Hazel's NICU discharge--the size for "near-termers" like she was. The smaller ones are super tiny! It scares me to think that I know someone with a baby small enough to wear that tiniest one!
I started with the smallest one and prayed as I stitched that he would grow, quickly, out of each size and into the next. I hope that he thrives and is able to come home with his family very soon!
We spent a week studying the Five in a Row book selection How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. This is the most adorable book ever! In it, the girl decides to make an apple pie, but her supermarket is closed. So she travels the globe to gather the ingredients for her pie--wheat from Italy, a cow (for milk, for butter) from England, a chicken (for eggs) from France, sugar cane from Jamaica, and cinnamon from Sri Lanka. Along the way, she dips a jar into the ocean so that she can evaporate the water for salt. Finally she lands back in the USA on a Vermont apple orchard to get the apples, makes her pie, and invites her friends to come enjoy it with her. The illustrations are hilarious, and totally make the book.
Obviously, this book is well suited to some geography study. We found all of the places that the girl went on our map, and drew lines between them to trace her travels. I forgot to take a picture of the map, but it looked crazy! What a fun trip that would have been.
We watched some YouTube videos about how to milk a cow and about the different varieties of chickens, their eggs, etc.
We spent a day taste testing different varieties of apples, and learning about the different parts of an apple. We dissected one and counted its seeds, weighed it in the bucket balance, and used it as a stamp.
The highlight of this row, of course, was making their own apple pie. Because Mommy is useless in the kitchen, the kids made their apple pie on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with Daddy! David had his work cut out for him, making a gluten and dairy free apple pie, his first pie EVER, with three eager little helpers. We ate it for dessert on Thanksgiving, and it was really good! I was impressed.
Following our apple theme, we kept a "thankful tree" through the month of November. I made a brown paint on butcher paper tree trunk and bought a pack of craft foam apples on a clearance end cap at Target. Every day we wrote down something were were thankful for on one of the apples and taped it up. The tree looked so fun at the end of the month. I saved the tree trunk so we can do it again next year!
This was such a fun book. Check it out of the library and read it with yours!
After the election was over, we did a week on Thanksgiving, loosely following the unit study plans on this mama's blog. We spent a day studying the Pilgrims' journey on the Mayflower, talking about what life was like aboard the ship. We followed that up with a simple handprint craft.
Wayflower. Love it.
The next day, we talked about the Wampanoag tribe who lived in the region that the Pilgrims settled. We used the wonderful "virtual field trip" at scholastic.com to see how the Native Americans lived.
Our third day focused on the daily lives of the Pilgrims in Plymouth. We read Sarah Morton's Day about the life of a Pilgrim girl, and a companion book called Samuel Eaton's Day about a Pilgrim boy. I can't recommend these highly enough! They're so wonderful! We discussed the differences between the Pilgrim children's lives and our own.
The last day, of course, we talked about the first Thanksgiving, the feast, etc. My favorite book (out of the MANY that I checked out and previewed for this topic) was The Pilgrims' First Thanksgiving. We made Thanksgiving story bracelets after reading the book, and later that evening, I had Hazel tell me back the story using her bracelet.
Before we cleaned out all of the pumpkins that we had decorating the inside and outside of our home for the months of October and November, we took the opportunity to plant one. We followed this suggestion and opened a pumpkin, added potting soil and water, and waited to see if some of the seeds sprouted.
And sprout they did! Several days later, we had many shoots coming up from our soil, and our pumpkin was starting to decay. We decided to continue the experiment and plant the entire decaying pumpkin in a pot with some more soil and let the plant keep growing. It's doing great!
I would be surprised if we actually saw any pumpkins from our pumpkin plant seedlings, but the kids are really enjoying watching it grow.
Some other things that have been working really well for us at Wallace Academy are the refrigerator chalkboard and the rice boxes. I have been giving kids a few letters or numbers to write for me right after breakfast, on the side of the fridge that is painted in chalkboard paint. They're really cooperative with handwriting practice when it's presented this way, especially when it's rewarded with things like chocolate chips or mini marshmallows, which are easily found in the kitchen. Handy.
They use the sandpaper letters and numbers to trace if they've forgotten how to make something I ask them to write on the fridge. I love these! All of mine have come from this Etsy seller. I have uppercase, lower case, and numerals. Spendy, but so nice!
We've also been doing letter practice in rice before we take it to pencil and paper, which is both popular and effective.
Thank you for catching up with us! We enjoy sharing about what we're learning and doing!
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?!
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!
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.
Hey there! I'm Erin, married to my favorite chemical engineer, living in the NOLA 'burbs. I'm a homeschooling mama to a seven-year-old boy and six-year-old boy/girl twins. I make time for crafting because the creative outlet keeps me sane. Thanks for stopping by!
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