Monday, Funday

We woke up to our first bit of Montana snow this morning. It had started around 8 last night as what was reported to one of my friends by a cashier as The Storm Of the Century. The wind was howling and the snow was coming sideways. In the end there was only a thin layer of snow on the ground this morning. If that was the storm of the century this is going to be a nice calm winter and I’ll be so happy.

Somehow after getting over her initial excitement about the snow Lil’s attitude deteriorated and we spent the first almost 30 minutes of the morning in tears (hers) and grumps (again hers) and frustration (both of us) so I decided to change my plans for school today. I was originally going to do language and reading practice and some math in the morning. I changed my mind to do fun creative art type stuff. Lil is so creative I figured the creative outlet would help get rid of the grumps. It worked like a charm.

First I gathered some snow in a 9×13 cake dish and set up Lil’s water paints.  While she molded the snow into a snowman (shocking) and then painted it I worked on making some playdough. She loves painting snow and spent quite a bit of time making a whole scene out of the pan. The she decided to see if she could make ice out of the snow by putting it in water. We talked about the science of what happened when she put her snow in the water and it was very interesting.

I was trying out a new playdough recipe and was still working on it when she finished her painting. She proceeded to dance around the kitchen counting to 118 for me and then counting by 10 and then singing the days of the week. This is the stuff I love about homeschooling Lil. Even when we aren’t doing a real lesson there’s still learning happening all day everyday, it’s awesome.

I made this huge batch of playdough by the recipe because I wanted to see how it worked out naturally. Let me just say I should have gone with my intuition and made a 1/2 batch or something because I have a huge mountain of orange playdough with orange glitter. Normally I make my playdough plain and then separate it into smaller amounts and then add the food coloring to it before I knead it. This works fine with my normal recipe, but like I said I wanted to make this recipe the way the author intended first. So I only made one color and Lil chose orange. I should mention that this is a 5 cup of flour recipe, it really did make a mountain of dough. Before I kneaded it and it became smooth it looked like someone had dumped a bunch of sweet potato mashed potatoes on my counter (and added glitter). I really do like the texture of this recipe and will be trying it again, but my way to see if it works out. Of course my way ends up with me having very colorful hands for a few hours, but I’d rather that then so much of one color.

With Thanksgiving being around the corner I decided to have her make a playdough turkey. I cut a (really bad) turkey body out of brown construction paper and she added to it. She loved it!

Then she made a turkey in her hand, I think it’s suppose to be like when you do a hand outline to make a turkey. That’s my best guess.

Then she made a dog.

After the dog she asked me what to make next. I don’t know where it came from, but I told her to make a ostrich. She said she couldn’t because she couldn’t remember what they looked like. I pulled up Google on my phone and found her some pictures. I think she did a great job with it.

He’s hopping if you couldn’t tell. I think she made a hippo in a pond and a bunny that I didn’t get pictures of. I’m sure more playdough fun will be happening soon.

Easter 2014

Lily and I did a few crafts leading up to Easter, but somehow couldn’t find any of them. Honestly I didn’t work to hard to find them because I figured this post would be picture heavy enough without them. So we’ll start with pictures of painting eggs.

Since we’re moving back to Montana (oh yeah, that’s happening and I’ll try to post about it at some point) I figured I’d get Papa in on our last Easter with him. He was a great sport and joined right in.

For this next egg (which is wooden) I used my trusty glue gun to put 3 flowers on it. I wasn’t sure it would do any good or make any kind of difference, but it turned out really nicely.

Like I said Papa really got into painting the eggs. I wish he’d have done this one on a wooden egg, but at least I got pictures.

Papa’s eggs.

Daddy’s eggs.

I spent so much time handing out eggs and taking pictures that I only painted one egg.

I found some of those egg wraps like I used when I was little and bought them on a whim to see if they worked better or worse than I remember.

To my amazement it worked better. Yay.

On to Easter.

Lily is all about cowgirls right now thanks to Sheriff Callie. We saw these boots on clearance at Target and Lily just had to have them.

We were waiting for Daddy to get downstairs so Lily can go a’ hunting.

This series of pictures just kills me. For some reason Lil sitting on the counter, she just looks so darn big. I don’t know when or how that happened. I certainly didn’t authorize it.

Yay, we finally got outside. This is Lily going through her basket.

Hunting.

3 generations on Easter

Us.

I love this crab apple tree in the backyard.

It’s so bright and beautiful.

Papa didn’t get home until the egg hunt was almost over so Lily hid eggs for him. He was again such a good sport and searched out all the eggs.

When Papa was done hunting for eggs we went inside and Lily opened her treasure eggs.

After we were done messing around with eggs we decided to go to a local school so Waldo and Lily could launch the rockets they have been building for the last week or so.

For some unknown reason the rockets didn’t work. So Lily got to play on the playground.

Lily story: The Fox and the Cat

Lily came up to me during quiet time the other day and showed me her drawing.

She then told me about the drawing. About half way through the story I was so sad that I hadn’t recorded her telling. So I asked her to repeat it when she was done.

She told it a little differently, but the gist was the same. I am just blown away by so much that this child of mine does on a daily basis. This drawing kills me in about 1000 ways. Her ability to draw and her enjoyment of it, her use of perspective (the book pages going behind the fox) without anyone telling her how to do it and her storytelling are just a few of the the ways.

I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Lily directed art

Last week Lil came up to me with her horses and told me she had an idea, she wanted to stamp with their hooves and tails. I said Sure, why not. So we did.

We went to the craft closet and she handed me bottles of paint and I put it on a paper plate. I asked her what kind of paper she wanted and she informed me that she already had the paper, Silly Mom. Oh, ok. We went to her bench and she set everything up.

She told me to grab a horse or three, after she reminded me of all of their names. I got my two horses and she handed me another and informed me that they were the girl horses and they don’t really get along with the boy horses because the boys are too rowdy. LOL. She then told me to dip the hooves in paint and the have the horses prance across the paper. So I did.

Then she took her turn to do the same and then we went back and forth all over the paper.

I think she really liked being in charge of what we did. I could see the self confidence shining in her eyes and it made me so happy that something so little and easy to do could make Lil so happy.

By the time we got to the second paper she had started to experiment with color combinations and eventually with using other parts of the horses.

Also by the time we got to the second paper I pretty much backed off and let her do all of the painting, I just commented on her work and took pictures.

I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

Random mobile shots

I made shampoo bars. And I love them. So far anyway.

Last Saturday was Waldo’s birthday. He wanted molten lava cake. I had a lot of fun researching recipes and figuring out what I wanted to make. Then we made a test recipe early last week just to make sure it was going to work out. Oh what a week. Let me tell you, molten lava cake rocks.

Lily loved the Lava cake too. We decided to forgo powered sugar on top and whipping cream and had mint brownie ice cream instead.

Lily’s very into dressing herself (when she does get dressed, when we are at home it’s pajamas all the time, which is fine with me) and doing it with style. This was her crazy outfit. Even the shoes don’t match. LOL.

We did some valentine’s stamping the other day. I carved a potato and was very impressed if I do say so myself.

She also stamped with the cut end of a celery bunch. The paint brush was her being silly.

This is Lily and Lucy Buttercup. Lily drew Lucy Buttercup and a robot.

Lily and Teacup. I think the drawing is Lily as a magician and Teacup has bows on her head and tail.

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