A Window into Our World

In honor of Natalie being 34 months old, I had a bunch of pictures printed today for her baby book!  That has been on my to do list for a long time.  Now I can move on to intending to put them in the scrapbook.

100lbs of kid

Mako is about 51 in people years.  He has started closing the bathroom door when he hides in the bathroom.  I assume that this is because of the comfort of the cold tile floor, not because of the 3 noisy kids.  Regardless, he sometimes closes himself in there when we are out of the house.

Now that's art.

Annalise has hit a new stride in art.  Some days she draws all the time.  This red bird ends up in a lot of her pictures:

I always mow in my evening gown too.

I mentioned in a previous post how much pointless/useless crafts irk me, so I have been working with the VBS craft team leader on some craft ideas for this summer.  The 4th night is about self control and one of the churches at the VBS clinic was going to make spray paint t-shirts with fruit stencils - since self control is a fruit of the Spirit.  Our craft gal and I agreed spray paint is probably out of bounds for us.  But I did some trials with other options.

Fruit stamp - I cut real fruit in half and painted on watered down acrylic paint, then stamped the shirt.  We are thinking this is better for littler kids.  The acrylic paint doesn't wash off in the laundry, something I already knew, but not because I had been painting Caleb's clothes on purpose.

Homemade Acrylic Spray Paint - For this I used water, alcohol and a small amount of acrylic paint and mixed it in a spray bottle.  This wast using a stencil and a cut out.  I like the negative image better.  We think the bigger kids will have more fun with this.

I like this craft idea because it can be tied to the lesson and because I think most of the kids will keep the shirt and wear it again.  I'd like to see a simple iron on added with a verse or list of the Fruit of the Spirit.  I've used printable iron on transfers in the past and they work really well.

We've finished our Little House on the Prairie unit.  We made bean porridge (the kids loved it, so I think we'll make it again), did a sort of report about beavers (the Prairie Primer recommended doing a report on one of the animals Pa traps - it turns out beavers eat green poop, so this was a good choice for us), and I scheduled a field trip to the Florida Pioneer Museum in Florida City - the volunteer docent was nowhere to be seen, so we just walked around outside.

Beans Porridge Hot

Florida Pioneer Museum

I plan to use the Prairie Primer again in a few months - maybe to use with Farmer Boy or On the Banks of Plum Creek.  But for now...we're moving on:

To infinity...and beyond!