One Hook Wonder

A Bit More Montessori

Yes, I'm aware that I said I was going to post this a few days ago.  Don't you love it how life gets in the way?  For me it's been watching "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" with Bean, walking through the garden with The Mister, working a tiny bit on my felt circles project, and running Boba back and forth to marching band practices.  

The following are a few lessons that Short Pants and I did last week.  We've gone on Montessori hiatus lately to give him time to adjust to the big kids being home (and our crazy schedule!).  I'm hoping to start back up again at the end of the week; they've been such fun for us both that I don't want to continue to let them fall by the wayside.  Our last session wasn't a very productive one, in large part (I think) because both Bean and even Boba were interested in seeing what Short Pants was doing.  Having the big kids around was a huge distraction for the little guy, so we'll need to have a closed "classroom" from now on.

Here's sweet Bean walking the line:

 

She also helped Short Pants sort colored beads (we'll have him use tweezers once his fine motor skills improve a bit):

 

 

Next Bean built small towers on the peg board and had Short Pants copy the color pattern:

 

He worked on transferring cotton balls with a clothes pin:

 

And also filling to the line with a baster:

 

 

A fun practical life activity that everyone enjoyed (even the little girl from next door!) was juicing oranges:

 

 

Not really Montessori, I guess, but we also had fun collecting Queen Anne's Lace, putting them in colored water, and watching them change over the course of a few days.  Our yellow and green didn't really turn out, but the red and blue did nicely:

 

 

We're hoping to get to our tye-dye project this week.  Boba plans to tye dye his underwear!!

Making And Baking (Or, Holy Shit I'm Exhausted!)

This week has been incredibly fast and full.  Each night I've gone to bed more than grateful to feel my pillow beneath me, and I know the kiddos (or at least the littlest ones) have been as well.  We've gone swimming almost every day, run errands, gardened, and found out that Bean and Boba really like to play Uno.  With all this excitement going on, the TV has been off, which has been wonderful.  The Mister and I stopped turning on the TV for the most part several weeks ago, and I was kind of worried that Bean and Boba would immediately turn it back on as soon as they returned home.  Happily this hasn't been the case.  I'd like to think that all of the fun activities we've been doing have been the reason for this, but as a realist I have to admit that us not having cable (unlike their Dad) probably has something to do with it as well!

One of the fun things we did this week was making stepping stones.  Let me be honest and admit that I originally bought the stepping stone kits to make over Spring Break a year ago at least - it could have even been the year before!  Bean and Short Pants really loved doing these; Boba was nice enough to go along with it (let's face it, making stepping stones when you're a 14-year-old boy is not a thrilling time).  At any rate it was fun:

 

 

Bean and I also made homemade peanut butter cups together.  They are GOOD:

 

 

You can find the super-easy recipe here.  I would have taken a picture of the carrot cake that Short Pants and I made too, but it was eaten far too fast to be photographed.

I haven't found any time the last few days to craft, but I did find time today to try out a new sandwich loaf recipe:

  

I'm anxious to hear what the kids think of it.  I'd love to stop spending money on bread for sandwiches!

Short Pants and I only did Montessori lessons one day this week, but I'll share some pics from it tomorrow evening.  Tomorrow morning and afternoon will find us picnicing and swimming at a nearby lake with our playgroup. 

Happy Harvest

So this morning was one of those mornings that I generally read about on other people's blogs.  You know, those blogs where all the craft projects turn out perfectly and they have really cool super huge gardens with no weeds.  The birds sing, the sun shines, and no mommies find themselves wondering if it's ok to drink a margarita at 10am. 

But look!  Look at what I brought in from my garden this morning:

 

A whole basket full of beans, tomatoes, squash, and zucchini!!  (bonus points for spotting the Transformer that Boba stuck in there)  Booyah, I say.  It was pretty much a magical experience.  Right after I loaded it all into the basket an animated deer came out of the woods and we had this, like, mystical conversation about all that was wrong in the world and

Oh. 

Suffice it to say I'm pretty happy with the harvest this morning.

This last week has been a busy one filled with homemade popsicle eating:

 

And a bit of curtain sewing.  I did not want to sew curtains At All.  But I couldn't find them in the right color, so sew I did.  Here's a bad shot of them:

 

These went into Short Pants's and Pita Pocket's room.  (did you notice what I just typed?)  We moved Pita Pocket out of our bedroom and into Short Pants's over the weekend.  Oh happy day.  No more being unable to use my own room after 8pm!  I've rediscovered the luxury of reading in bed and am loving it.  As an added bonus, since I lined the curtains with blackout material both boys are sleeping a bit later in the morning.  Woo hoo!

While I was already on the curtain bandwagon, I finally broke down and hemmed a pair of twin sheets for our closet curtains.  I'm not sure why it took me almost a year to get around to this, but it did:

 

We are decidedly not clean, organized closet people so it's a definate improvement to the bedroom.  Next up will be curtains for the littles' closet (again, a project that should have been done a year ago) and new curtains for Boba's room.  He's been seduced by blackout material.

Despite all the curtain sewing, I did find time to cut out my circles for the felt picture:

 

Hopefully sewing on that will begin in the next day or two.  Boba has roped me into taking him and Bean to see "Transformers 2" tonight.  They're back for the summer and full of ideas and places to go.

Back In The Saddle Again

The garden hasn't seen much action in the last few weeks thanks to the insane heat coupled with near record amounts of rainfall.  It's been like living in some kind of crazy midwest tropical rainforest.  I've scuttled out a few times to check on things, but the last two nights were the first chances I've had to really work in the garden for awhile.  I was able to mulch the entire herb garden with compost from our own pile (YAY!!), pull out all the old pea vines, and plant 4 new tomatoes.  Oh, and weed.  Don't forget - weed weed weed weed weed.  I'm so glad the plants are getting large enough now that soon I'll be able to kiss that loathsome chore goodbye for the most part.

Here's a few long shots of the garden.  I'm really pleased with it so far this year:

 

 

Notice the ever-present garden helper doing some watering:

 

Cropped out of this shot are the 4 new tomato plants.  I committed the gardening sin of planting them and then forgetting to water them.  Let's just say they were...err...a bit droopy:

 

Short Pants is thrilled that he'll be picking his first tomato very soon.  He's been eagerly watching the color changes:

 

He's also been watching our new pumpkins very closely.  I can't wait till Pita Pocket is big enough to get excited over this stuff too:

He's also taken it upon himself to check the flowers in the shade garden every afternoon to see how many have opened up:

And very soon we'll all be eating squash:

 

Some zucchini:

 

And even green beans:

Totally Selfish Crafting

It's high time we had some of it around here.  I'm having to deal with a few very stressful issues right now, so I'm planning to apply some Totally Selfish Crafting balm and hope that it makes me feel at least a tiny bit better. 

First up, this yummy fabric.  Look at, love it:

 

When I saw this post over at Soule Mama I was smitten.  I am making that blanket FOR ME and ME only. (ok, doubtless The Mister and the kids will take turns swiping it - but it's still mine)  I am going to look at it daily folded up on the arm of our loveseat and give a happy sigh.  Just looking at this makes me give a happy sigh:

  

Normally (ok, never) I don't spend that kind of money on fabric, but after weeks of lusting over the blanket I gave into temptation.  So glad now that I did.

And once the blanket is done, I'm going to cuddle up on the couch with it and make one of these felt circles pictures.  It looks like just the kind of mindless soothing crafting that I need.  I'll be sewing one for the almost-done-dining-room:

  

And did you notice the floor?  The gorgeous, beautiful, new floor of the almost-done-dining room?!  The Mister put it down in our kitchen as well - so exciting!

Now I'm off to do some Totally Selfish Eating involving crackers and gruyere cheese.  Mmm!!

Summer Solstice

Since we were too busy on summer solstice to actually celebrate summer solstice, we did a very subdued celebration yesterday.  We changed our nature tray to reflect the new season:

 

I did a very simple one, as I know that Short Pants will quickly fill it up with all his summer booty.  There are flowers and lavender from our yard, as well as shells and rocks from Fake Beach, along with some shells that we collected on vacation years ago.  Oh, and don't forget the handy-dandy bug magnifier from Chick-Fil-A holding two dead moths and a bee.  We found the goose feather when we went swimming yesterday afternoon.

We also tried out a new cookie recipe - lavender cookies!  You can find the recipe here.  Short Pants thought it was very cool that we were eating the lavender from our garden.  The cookies were actually very good - light and a tiny bit buttery lemony.  But they were also weird, like the smell and taste didn't match.  As The Mister put it, it's odd to be eating cookie but smelling bath product!

  

I also changed out the seasonal books in the book basket located in the play nook:

 

Short Pants was very excited to see the new selections:

 

Tomorrow I'll be showing you some upcoming projects I plan on doing for Totally Selfish Crafting.  Boo-yah!

Beach Babies

We've been spending at least a couple of afternoons a week up at Fake Beach lately.  The littles love it, and Bean and Boba will as well when they return home from their dad's.  Last year it was very difficult for me to take them all by myself, as Pita Pocket was 4 months old.  Sitting in 90 degree heat with a baby on you = not fun (for you or the baby!).  This year, however, Pita Pocket is old enough to enjoy eating playing in the sand and generally romping about.  I took these pictures the other week on the very first day we went.  It had been raining loads previously and the sand was still really wet.  Check out how deep little Pita Pocket's feet sunk!

 

 

 

 

 

Yay for summer - and the sand it leaves behind in toes both little and big.

Mucho Montessori

Yeah, yeah, I know it's a lame title, ok?  Sorry for the unintended blogging break; we've been working on a major home improvement project that I'll hopefully be able to share with you soon! 

This is what's been going on in our little corner of the Montessori world lately -

Playing with bugs:

 

This cool little bug set is from Discovery Toys.  It has all kinds of different matching and patterning cards.  Short Pants has been super interested in bugs lately, so to go along with this we'll be learning the body parts of a few insects next week as well as using some insect rubbing cards:

 

We also had great fun with this parking lot game idea from My Montessori Journey.  It was great practice for Short Pants; I'll be making parking cards for all of the letter sounds soon:

  

Another letter sounds game that he really enjoyed involved putting 3-6 sandpaper letters out on the rug at the same time.  I sat across the room and asked him to bring me the letter sound he heard when I said a certain word (i.e. igloo).  He had a lot of fun with it because it allowed him to be physical - at different points during the game he decided he was a kangaroo that had to hop back and forth, and a tiger that had to prowl back and forth.

He also did a lot more work with the Movable Alphabet, requesting to work with it several days in a row:

We also worked on pouring and scooping.  Short Pants tends to get a bit bored with this, but he's not quite ready to pour water just yet:

 

 

We've been learning more about the continent of Antarctica as well.  I copied off some pictures from Google, and it really surprised me how much Short Pants enjoyed looked at them.  He chose to get them out several days in a row.  We talked about how cold Antarctica is, and how scientists go their to study weather and animals.  He had a bunch of fun with this artic iceberg activity (again from My Montessori Journey) and enjoyed playing with the different types of Arctic animals.  Later this week we'll go through the penguins and match them up to cards and learn a tiny bit about the different types:

  

Color tablets were a big hit lately as well.  We're working on Box #3, which consists of 9 different colors in 7 shades each - so 63 tablets all together.  Short Pants has gotten pretty good at grading them from darkest to lightest (I was surprised at how hard some of them were for ME!).  I bought ours as an inexpensive download from A Bit Of This And A Bit Of That:

  

One thing we ended up working with last week that really surprised me were our set of metal insets (Short Pants calls them metal insects!).  The Mister had nabbed an old desk for $5, which Short Pants promptly fell in love with.  He wanted to do a lesson at the desk with a pencil, so I grabbed the insets and had him give them a try:

 

In case you're not familiar with them, they're basically a metal stencil with an inset in different shapes.  The child first traces the inside of the stencil with colored pencil #1, then traces around the inset using colored pencil #2.  The the child fills in the shape he's drawn with lines or zig zags.  It's great for fine motor and an introduction to writing:

 

Short Pants enjoyed these so much that for the next two days after lessons were over he went back down in the basement by himself to do some more:

 

We also worked on sorting the geometric solids into families depending on whether they had flat, curved, or both surfaces:

 

And built with the pink tower *and* the brown stair:

 

Whew...was that enough Montessori for you?

Again With The Mmm

Whenever Pita Pocket spies something he'd like to eat or drink, he says, "Mmm..."  It's quite adorable, I assure you.  However, when he wants to nurse, he screeches like a baby dinosaur and throws himself backwards across my lap.  Not quite as adorable.

We've had all kinds of yummies going on here lately.  Over the weekend I tried out this fantastic hummus recipe from The Toby Show.  Good stuff, I tell ya.  Even more fantastic was the homemade pita bread we ate it with (can you tell I'm a bread lovah?).  The recipe is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day:

 

It baked up soooo yummy:

I used the rest of the dough to make some pecan caramel sticky rolls:

 

You are a FOOL, I tell you, a FOOL if you don't buy that Artisan Bread book:

 

We've also been eating loads of peas fresh from the garden.  We've had a great crop so far this year:

 

I also made some granola, which was my very first attempt at the stuff.  Yeah, I feel really stupid for ever buying the super expensive bags of it from the grocery now.  So easy, and soooo good on yogurt (and yes, I do know my ABCs, thankyouverymuch):

Simple Toys For Smallish Boys

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that we follow the Waldorf philosophy regarding toys.  Most of our toys are wood or cloth, and none of them take batteries.  Whenever I feel myself browsing online toy shops a bit too much and falling into the "gotta have it" mode, I return to a wonderful book called Toymaking with Children.  It is such a great reminder that children really only need a few toys to create satisfying, enriching play - and that those toys can often be incredibly simple.  

Last year I made Short Pants a few of the crocheted cords from the book, and recently he's been asking for more.  Finally I got the chance to sit down and make a few, and my boy was thrilled.  They're incredibly simple, but I have to say that they're one of the most played with toys in our home.  For open-ended play value, I'd rate these cords right up there with play silks:

    

Short Pants uses them for snakes, fire hoses, leashes, and just lately he's been directing me to tie specific ones together so that he can create traps and pulleys.  Here's what our living room might look like on a typical afternoon:

 

He'd been wanting me to rig up a harness using them so that he could pretend to be a cow or horse, and it just happened that I saw an easy crocheted harness pattern advertised in "Living Crafts" magazine.  The pattern wasn't up yet on their site, but they were kind enough to send it to me via e-mail:

 

As you can see, Pita Pocket is a rather lazy horse:

 

This last toy I actually made to use during our Montessori lessons; it's a simple memory game.  I just used pre-cut wooden disks from the craft store and drew on them with sharpies.  Short Pants LOVED this game; I think we played it ten times in a row!  I promised that I would make some more soon:

 

As the yarn was from my stash, I think I only spent about $6 for the wooden disks.  So there you go - 3 great, open-ended toys for $6 - you can't beat that!