A Potter at Her Wheel

Tamarin can read. She thinks she can't. She constantly reads the word outright, asks me what is says, then sounds it out again. She is capable. She just needs incentive to move along. Last week I printed this cute month calender. I told her if she read a book for every weekday on the calender that we would go to the store and she could pick out something she wanted. I know, it's bribery. Some people think bribery is wrong, well you can bite me.

It was Tuesday I think when I told her my plan. She read 5 books that day (so we worked backward since we started mid-month).

A couple days after our agreement I found a kid's potter's wheel at a craft store. Tamarin has been asking to make pottery. Sure enough she was happy with that being her prize at the end of the month. On the shelf it went staring at her every day.

Twenty-one books in nine days. Not too shabby kid :) This morning we opened the wheel.

They have been at it all morning. The thing is so noisy! I hate it, but I love the looks on their faces :) I'm going to have to search the internet for the cheapest place to buy clay!

Tamarin asked me to help her form something similar to what I shaped first as their example. So the first one is our work together. The second is all Lemur. She wanted to do it all on her own.

We got this wheel. The reviews on the website are bad, but as long as you keep the clay moist I felt for being a plastic toy at heart it worked pretty well.

The Obligatory Messy Easter Egg Decorating

Every year. It's mandatory. At least after a couple of years I realized to NOT do it the day before. Pictures look a little weird with green and blue hands. We invited some friends over and had a ball... errr.... an egg....

 

I saw an idea on pinterest where you swirl dye in shaving cream. I can't say that they end up looking that different from the traditional dye, but it was something different and messier. So naturally the kids loved it!

We tried the melted crayon method too, but the kids couldn't move the crayons from the warmer to the egg before the crayon cooled. Oh well. Here's the end result after being jeweled up.

I have to say this was a ton easier with three adults around. Plenty of hands to take finished eggs, help remove lost ones from the shaving cream, and minimize breakage. Perfect.

Growing up we knew our parents hid the eggs. Thanks to the Rise of the Guardians movie (cute movie, if you haven't seen it you should) the girls think they should wake up to eggs in the yard tomorrow morning...... I don't wanna. I could do it tonight, but chances are the dogs will eat them...... ugh. Who wants to come over around 6 in the morning and hide eggs?

Easter Pinatas!

 

What else would you decorate for Easter?

Tuesday we made some paper mache eggs (mix 2 parts water to 1 part flour..... ish). I intended to get a picture of this mess, but I didn't. Howler refused to touch it. Instead she dictated to me where each piece of slimy newspaper should be placed. Chris helped me wrap up some extras for our friends that came over on Wednesday. I never knew my husband had gone his whole life without doing paper mache. His conclusion: "It's sticky. I don't want to." But he was sweet and helped me anyway.

We watched the old Disney short Funny Little Bunnies first to give the kids ideas how to paint their eggs. Tamarin caught on and did stripes. Lemur is still in geography mode and worked on a mother earth motif. Howler's was colorful to say the least :)

The kids had a great time painting and glittering their eggs. We hung them outside to dry and then turned to more important matters.

Wreck It Ralph has broadened the children's view of what constitutes a video game. One of my oldest friends and I were rockin' it old school on the NES. We even got out the old track and field mat (anyone else remember that?). The kids had a great time running and jumping. More fun than they ever had doing similar things with the Wii.

What are your alternatives to decorating eggs the traditional way? More importantly, what is your favorite old school video game? I might have to go scour ebay.

Visitors

I LOVE living in the country.

  

 Where else could the zoo come to you?

Two vultures trespassed on Hawk's territory today. Hawk kept a watchful eye then followed them off the property. I don't know that I've ever mentioned Hawk before today. She was here when we moved in. I have been listening to her children in the trees for the last few weeks. She has been good enough to leave our birds alone, hopefully her offspring will be just as cooperative.

Chickies are here!

Squeee!!!! Aren't they cute! The hatchery shipped them just after midnight on Saturday! I was so worried they wouldn't make it here alive between sitting at the post office for a day and the cold, but everyone made it! I love listening to baby chicks. They instantly cheer up a house.

If you are interested in keeping chickens I highly recommend visiting Backyard Chickens. There is a ton of information there.

My brooder is a wire rabbit cage with cardboard stuck around the sides to keep them from escaping. I use paper grocery bags along the front to keep them from escaping on that side, but allow easy access through the door. Then a towel on the bottom that is changed out once a day when they are small, twice a day as they get bigger. It works for a few weeks and then I have to get out another cage and split them up, but by then I can set the two cages side by side and the heat lamp still gives enough heat to both cages since their needs for external heat source declines with age.

I'm a relaxed chicken keeper. I listen and watch them instead of using a thermometer. If they are chirping a lot they are cold, if they are as far from the light as possible they are too hot. I adjust the lamp accordingly. Instead of the commercial pick me up goop most places sell for new chicks I feed them scrambled eggs.

I had hoped to have a wooden brooder in the barn by this time, but it just didn't happen! Always too much to do. Most of the birds we got are normal, all purpose birds, but Tamarin insisted on getting two breeds.

The naked neck



and polish



She is beyond excited about her strange birds :)

My Superman

 Another day, another year, getting older.

The girls painted him pictures of our family (Ellie made two).

Like every year I made him lasagna. I used this recipe this year. I used a different brand of sausage and my own spaghetti sauce, but I thought it was the best one I've ever made. Not very pretty though so I'll spare you the picture. The cake wasn't too bad, definitely not the worst cake I've made :) I think I'm going to be ill though. I ate the missing corner for lunch. Ugh. What? It was convenient, but definitely too much sugar.

I used my family's chocolate cake recipe, sorry, not sharing :)

Me on the Map

I fell in love with this idea the moment I saw it on pinterest!

Ah! How cool! A box for each continent! Two bucks each at the local craft store. It's a place to store all those animals and it's educational! Two for one. They knew who went into the Africa box immediately, of course. I was impressed that they knew who went into Antarctica with no prompting! I'm going to have to do something about Australia, it's empty...

I also picked up this Safari Toob: Around The World Landmarks . Believe it or not they knew the Eiffel tower (It's in Paris, France - T), Empire State Building (That one's in New York - L), that green lady belonged in New York, the Pyramids (Those are in Africa - T), and they knew that the big clock belonged in London, England because of Peter Pan. They said the house (Parthenon) was from Hercules and the temple (Taj Mahal) looked like it came from Aladdin.... thank you Disney.... No clue on Arch of Triumph or Temple of Inscriptions.

We read, Me on the Map and did these map discs. The girls had more fun working on it than I thought they would. I was shocked we made it through them all in one sitting.

Little sis watches on while they work.

 Lots more on geography to come. That will be our focus over the next few months.

I'm Gonna Gross You Out!

(Title to be read to the tune "I'm Gonna Knock You Out") 

Who is the gross one in your family? You know, the one that can handle anything nasty without flinching. What is the grossest thing you have ever done that freaked out your spouse? Or was it your spouse that did something revolting?

I'm serious, if you gross out easily you may not want to read on.

Yesterday, I cleaned the girls' ears. I finally got some of the stuff I've been trying to convince Lemur to let me pull out for months.

I was so proud of her for staying still for me to get it I saved it to show Chris! He was disgusted.

This weekend Chris was disturbed when I cut one of my skin tags off with nail clippers. He compared it to cutting off your own finger. Silly boy. For those of you who may not know your skin tags tend to grow when you are pregnant. Cutting them off has become a habit of mine in the months following birth.

The girls played outside all weekend. Sunday night after they bathed Tamarin got freaked out because she found a tick on her. Not the first time this has happened, but this was different for some reason. She had a meltdown. She wouldn't go to sleep because she was scared. We spent yesterday checking everything for ticks. We put poison on the dogs and cats. I've gone through all the precautions possible, but she now has an irrational fear of ticks. *sigh* At least I can tie this in to schooling. I picked up this book at half price books this weekend.

Happy coincidence. We wrapped up our bit on Ping yesterday so before we start our next "unit" for lack of a better word, we are going to talk about blood today and I'm going to pull out our bug books again so we can discuss ticks as animals and not big scary, drain all your blood and leave you dead monsters.

Honesty

Hmm.. okay so my facebook hiatus has gotten me thinking about honesty. There's also a quote floating around pinterest about there's a time for honesty and a time for politeness. (Oddly enough though if you search honesty polite on pinterest you get a lot of political things....)

Where is that line for you? Do you find it easier to be polite or honest online versus real life?

It should be easier for us to be polite. We SHOULD be able to keep scrolling when we see something we would be inclined to have full honesty about. Yet, there have been studies that show the opposite. Hmm, after searching for the last ten minutes, I can't find the study I read on it some time back, but I did find these two articles talking about rude behavior online. Computer World and Wall Street Journal.

I know for me it's the final theory of the Computer World article. I get the pub feel when I'm online, probably because I don't get out with people very often anymore sans kids so this is my little bit of adult interaction I get in a day. I've kept my facebook friends trimmed to those I feel are good friends and I feel like we know each other well enough to gab and poke at times without anyone getting their feelings hurt.

Lately the conversation as a whole has turned negative and I realized, the negativity of some people on my feed caused a shift in my demeanor online. When I return to facebook I will be on a headhunting spree to cut out the negativity even if they are people I truly enjoy being around or view as old friends. Yes, that includes people who don't realize the things they post are rude or can be demeaning to groups of people. It's time to inject a little more politeness back into my facebook world.

Which do you feel is easier? Do you ignore people's posts that hit a nerve? Or do you find you are more likely to say things you wouldn't in real life conversations?

I never found the honesty/polite quote on pinterest, but I thought this one was fitting:

Leprechauns!

Today we talked about St Patty's day. We read S is for Shamrock: An Ireland Alphabet. Tamarin read this:

She said it was awful. It has a lot of words she hasn't had to read yet like potatoes and Irish :) I thought it was cute, but probably shouldn't be a level one. At least it's not the same difficulty as other level ones we have. It's a good book if you are tired of hearing the same couple of dozen words all the time as I'm beginning to feel.

We did a rainbow scavenger hunt. "Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Seven colors in the house, can you help me find it?"

Each color had a hint on them to lead to the next.

Then we glued our rainbow together! The one on the right is Howler's (aka her handing me the colors and me doing it for her). Tamarin had to get the colors in order. Lemur had to get them all in the pot. That was what they felt needed to happen, I just told them to make a rainbow.

We made leprechaun chow. This recipe with a few tweaks, 3 Tbs of condensed milk + 1 Tbs of milk (instead of the 3 Tbs cream), then 2 tsp of vanilla instead of the flavorings she listed (butter flavoring? If I want something to taste like butter I add butter.). We used green sprinkles that didn't show up well in the picture. Should have used the whole container.

Then we turned our attention to catching leprechauns. First we did a cut and paste:

Lemur decided she wasn't interested so I cut her's out. Then I was about to glue the last piece on, guess who suddenly decided she wanted to make her leprechaun.... Guess what the last piece was? Tamarin did the whole thing, which is impressive since we don't do a lot of structured cutting. She complained the entire time, but I thought she did very good.

I gave Tamarin the writing prompt, "If I tricked the leprechaun I would..."

If you can't read Tmarinese, "If I tricked the leprechaun I would make him catch an orca. Caught 1. He caught 2. He caught 3. He caught 4. Then he got tired. Then I got the pot of gold. The end." She thought that up herself and drew the picture to go with it. I thought it was pretty smart :)

Now we are perfecting our leprechaun trap. We're going to set it Saturday night and in the morning there will be a handful of gold dollar coins under the trap :) The best thing about it, Tamarin just told me, "Oh no! We didn't do any school today!" Best covert schooling ever.

"Erin go braugh!" For all my Irish friends :) Yes, I'm talking about you Erin :p

Infinity

Anyone else seen this?? Ah! Okay, I have to admit, my inner child squealed at the idea of playing this game. I mean, disney+video games, seriously? Where could this go wrong?

It's a shame Disney didn't do it first. For those of you who might not know, there is already a game like this out there called Skylander. You have to collect all the figures at $6-10 a pop and that's how you unlock more content in the game. It's a cash cow for the company producing it. The parent in you may be thinking, "Wow, what a rip off! You could drop hundreds of dollars on the figures." Then there will be expansion packs and more figures, just like Skylander.

When I was a kid we devoted all of our time to defeating the neighbor's newest video games. We sat there as a group, taking turns if someone needed a break. We knew who was better at certain types of levels. As a group we were unstoppable. I have no problem with my kids playing video games. We will sit here as a family taking turns playing Zelda some weekends.

Game companies make tons of money off sequels and spinoffs of popular games. Knight of the Old Republic for example. LOVED the first game, waited and waited for the second. It was a bit disappointing, but I still would have bought the next edition because I loved playing in the Star Wars universe. What did they do to make more money consistently? They brought out an online role playing game instead. As much as I would love to play it, I don't have hours to devote to it. I need games with levels, save points, and pause buttons.

When I saw Skylander I thought long and hard about it, but I began to see too many similarities between online role playing games and this set up. The game never ends, there is always another figure to buy and another piece to unlock. Then about the time you run out of missions, the next expansion pack comes out. It's like they are training kids for the next step, never ending hours spent on the computer.

So, all I can say is, it's both wonderful and a shame that Disney didn't do it first. I would have gone straight to collector mode and bought the Disney version without question like a good little consumer. Now to try and convince my husband we don't need it :)

Edited to add: After giving Chris my speech on why I thought it was a bad idea he responded with, "It's a gateway drug to WOW." I thought that was too funny to not share.