One of my favorite things about holiday traditions, is the fact that I can watch my children grow into the holidays. Each year they experience those “same things” at a different level. Halloween is a favorite around here. We aren’t into anything really spooky but enjoy dressing up, bonfires, spiced cider and jack-o-lanterns all in good fun! We always Trick-or-Treat at a local Historic Village that puts on a Sleepy Hollow like theme in the village. They have jack-o-lantern lined streets, eerie music, and little stage plays going on through out. This year Fairy has discovered spooky things that didn’t phase her in the past… and she is getting a bit of a thrill from it all. I remember when Bug made that cross over a couple Halloweens ago – from it all just seeming like lots of commotion and silly costumes to a little bit spooky.
Crossing the covered bridge (still makes me cringe a bit) that is filled with smoke, in the dark, with flashing lights from underneath, while clip, clop horse hoof sound effects played was indeed thrilling for her. She refused to step on any cracks in the bridge floor and finally made it across wide eyed. She told me that she was very brave and I of course agreed. I was a little afraid it might have been too much for her this year but she wants to go back and do it again next weekend. LOL… not until next year sweetie. That’s the thing about traditions… it will be there next year. Maybe she will be a princess again. Maybe she will have moved onto something else. Maybe it will be a little bit spooky. Maybe not so much. Or maybe she will clutch my hand white knuckled like Bug did this year (that boy’s imagination would give Ichabod a run for his money).
Once a month we are going to be making quilt squares to highlight some of the fun things we are learning about this year. We will each be making one 10″ x 10″ square every month and then at the end of the school year we will sew them all into a memory quilt.
This month we used a Glue Batik Fabric Painting method to highlight our recent apple studies. I stumbled across this idea on That Artist Woman‘s blog and knew we had to try it (check out her site for detailed directions). It was a really easy project for any age child but it does take a couple days to complete due to drying times.
First I cut out 10″ squares of white muslin. Then we drew a design on the fabric with pencils.
After we had our designs ready, we traced them with the Blue Gel Elmer’s School Glue. Then the fabric had to dry over night.
The next day we used water down acrylic paints to cover the entire square of fabric.
Once that dried we washed out the glue with hot water and a little dish soap. I hung the squares to dry and then ironed them flat.
A few notes: The next time we do this (and oh yes… I imagine we will be doing this many more times) I will encourage everyone to get more detailed – or at least cover more surface area with the glue. I also think I watered down my paints too much. I would have like brighter colors… they ended up drying a lot lighter than they originally looked but I had been afraid of the fabric ending up really stiff.
Ha! This was one of the baking episodes that you get started only to realize that you are missing some key ingredients. My husband refuses to buy in bulk. Just not his nature and I will agree tends to lead to wasted food (at least around here). He prefers to shop on a daily basis. I’m not going to complain since he does do all of the grocery shopping! But it does mean my pantry and fridge are fairly meager looking, especially in comparison with my mom’s which is always busting at the seams, leaving her ready to cook anything on a moment’s notice. But back to the cookies, I ended up having to cut the recipe in half to pull it off.
These are our favorite cookies. Everyone likes them (cooked or right out of the bowl) and their oatmeal and grape nut content allow me to ‘believe’ that they are practically a granola bar and therefore good for you ;).
Grape Nut Cookie Recipe
INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 c. flour
1 t. baking soda
1 1/2 c. (3 sticks) margarine
2/3 c. firmly packed brown sugar
2/3 c. granulated sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
2 c. Post Grape-Nuts cereal
2 c. oatmeal
1 c. dried fruit (cranberries, raisins, etc.)
DIRECTIONS
Mix flour and baking soda in small bowl. Bear margarine in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed to soften. Gradually add sugars, beating until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually add flour mixture, beating well after each addition. Stir in cereal, oats and fruit. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake in a 375 oven for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool 1 minutes; remove from cookie sheets. Cool completely on wire racks.
For this week’s Unplugged Challenge theme hard we made primitive folk art style Barnyard Animal Toys. When we first found out the theme last week, I asked the kids what was ‘hard’ and all of their answers all stemmed around wood. Wood blocks, wood toys, tree branches, etc. I spent several days trying to come up with an idea. Then I remembered a post my SIL, Tina had on her blog last week linking to directions on making wood toys. It seemed like a bit of a stretch to have the kids do it but they thought it was a great idea and were in on it every step of the way.
First I drew up some farm animal outlines based on some toys I saw online (I’ve included my drawings as a pdf if you would like Pig/Horse/Cow & Sheep/Goat), printed them and cut them out. I had each child pick their favorite and then we traced the animals onto a scrap piece of 1" thick pine. Using a coping saw, we cut out the basic shapes. Bug really likes to use a saw (he was lots of help to Daddy when fixing some rotten boards on the deck this spring) and enjoyed getting a chance to cut out his animal. The Fairy girl gave it a try too. In the end Daddy did do most of the cutting as the kids decided it was too hard (does that count as a second theme tie in?).
The step that they thought was the most fun was getting to use the Dremel to smooth the edges. Adorned with safety goggles and mommy’s steady hand they sanded their own animals. You could just use normal sand paper if you would prefer. I finished cleaning them up.
Once they were all smooth we used a light coat of Non-toxic children’s watercolor paints to give a color wash. I used the water colors because it is light enough to still see the grain (which is cool) and most importantly, it is what I had on hand. I still need to get a clear coat sealer or wax to apply over the color, but they are done enough for the kids to start playing with them.
All in all, I would guess this was about a 2 hour project. The kids are very proud of the toys that they made and are really enjoying them because of the process.
For Week Three our focus was on tractors/farm machines and the book Rusty, Trusty Tractor. To go along with this theme, our art project was Tracks in the Mud.
It was a beautiful day so we rolled out a large sheet of paper on the drive way, filled a baking pan with WASHABLE brown paint and then dipped a variety of items into the paint to make mud tracks on the page (you could easily do a scaled down version at the kitchen table but I do think it is important for big, messy art sometimes). This is one of those projects that is all about the PROCESS not the PRODUCT.
It was so much fun. By the end, the kids had gotten so into it… they were literally IN it and left their own tracks in the mud.
Umm… baking day! This is quickly becoming our favorite day around here. It is laid back and quiet. Everyone has some time to do their own thing in the morning (I can actually get some laundry done) with me calling the troops into the kitchen every so often to help. Yummy smells and yummy treats.
To go along with our Week Two activities we made our own butter. Of course we started by getting a loaf of bread going in the bread machine (ohhh do we love our bread machine). Then it was an epic battle of man vs machine. We poured a little bit of heavy whipping cream into a mason jar, the rest went into the mixer bowl with a bit of salt. And they were off. Guess who won? The boy! I was actually amazed at how he never tired of shaking that jar (just shows the boundless energy of a 5 year old boy).
For those of you who try this, you know you have butter when the cream transforms first to thick whipping cream (forms peaks) and then to what I can best describe as scrambled eggs in milk. It will totally pull away from the sides forming solid clumps in the middle, in a pool of buttermilk.
After I strained the butter I couldn’t bring myself to just throw away the buttermilk so instead I googled ‘Buttermilk Recipes.” I found one for ButterMilk Sugar Cookies that I highly recommend. We didn’t make the glaze but the cookies were very yummy with a more cake like texture.