Rainbow Tree

For some reason I love rainbows.  Maybe it's because I had a childhood cat named Rainbow.  Maybe it's because my mom's Chevelle from when I was little had an awesome rainbow sticker on the rear window.  Maybe they're just super cool.  Whatever, I love them.

St. Patrick'sDay has brought a slew of rainbow themed crafty things to do on Pinterest.  With yesterday's 60 degree March day in Minnesota we decided to head out and rainbow-ify the tree in our back yard.  I read about doing this using chalk that's been soaked in water so we pulled some old yogurt containers and soaked some sidewalk chalk before naptime so we could go out when everyone woke up.

The result was pretty cool and I imagine we'll be doing more of this as the weather warms up.

After a while we ended up in the driveway making sharks and turtles and ducks and "A"s and "E"s.  Em helped a little, but mostly sat on the edge of the driveway drinking water while wearing her necklace.  This kid has totally stolen my heart.  Look at those eyes!

Other stuff we do

I was recently trying to think of things we do around here to give a friend some ideas for fairly stationary activities for her daughter to do while she's on bedrest with baby #2.  It got me thinking I should put some of that stuff up here.

We do loads of craft stuff.  We have 2 of those itso boxes from target that have shelves and trays of different things.  It's stacked and on wheels next to the children's table in the living room and the girls have access to it anytime.  It's a great self-occupier when I need to get dinner ready or something.  Plus they love it.
*Stuff that stays all the time:  plain paper, dabbo markers, play dough, watercolor paints, dry erase letter/ number practice tracing books.
*Stuff that rotates: stamps, stickers, glue/ collage work, special projects (like the Valentine cards)

Probably my favorite "toy" I've made was out of a desire to have one of these object permanence boxes but being unwilling to spend that kind of $$ on a box.  C'mon people.  When this box came into our house the yankee in me knew it had another purpose I just needed to come up with it.  It landed in the office until it hit me one day.  I simply closed the box, wrapped it in white contact paper then used my exacto knife to cut a door and a circle hole on top.  The door was going to get a fancy adorable handle, but has a little loop of ribbon instead.

Emma uses it fairly regularly and it's actually nice that the handle is so little because it helps her strengthen her little pincer grasp.

And sometimes you just need to take a break and kiss your big sister.

Another nice activity that I put together after going to a "Montessori at home" night at Ada's school is a leaf polishing tray.  It used to live in a tray, but after getting a card from a dear friend that had a cute little plant on it I decided to put it in a box with that label on it.  It's a pretty common Montessori activity and I like it because the plants need to get cleaned off and it gives them practice on being gentle with plants.

In the box is a small pitcher (so you can control how much water they are using).  This one has a little chip in it, but I bought it in Sicily and it makes me happy that it gets used rather than just sitting somewhere.  There's a small sponge and 2 little dishes.  One for pouring the water in and one for squeezing the sponge into.

I just fill up the little pitcher and give it all the girl who is using it and give them a plant that needs some attention.  Then they pour the water, wet the sponge, squeeze it our and start wiping the leaves.  Good stuff.

So far Emma mostly just goes through the motions, but she enjoys doing this work.  

Recent outings

With Tony's hours what they are we have tried to make a conscious effort to make the most of the time we have together as a whole family.  After our vacation we have been trying to keep the ball rolling with doing some sort of outing on Sundays when he is off.

We recently got a babysitter for Em and took Ada to see her first live performance.  It was really intended to be her birthday present, but arrived in February.  One of my mom's great friends gave Ada a book when she was born calle Harold and the Purple Crayon which is a stellar book.  We read it a lot and it's one of the books Ada will sometimes "read".  When I saw it was being performed in the cities at the Children's Theatre Company it seemed like the perfect introduction for her, plus it was a nice thing for us to do as a mama, papa, Ada date.  SHE LOVED IT!

We have also loved using our membership to the Minnesota Children's museum.  It's totally worth the drive and the girls love it.  We spent most of our time in 2 rooms and didn't even touch about half of the museum.  This was one of my favorite visits since we've been here.

Didn't take many pics, but here are some highlights.

Building a trolley...

Playing with some water...

Looking at xrays...

Review...

The whole family...

Oobleck

In honor of Dr. Seuss, I thought I would post a video of Emma enjoying some oobleck for the first time. She loved it- I loved it- I mean, really how can you not go a little nuts for this stuff?  

My daughter the astronaut

Some of you may know that our little Ada is slightly obsessed with all things outer space- especially the moon.  She was an astronaut for Halloween this year thanks to Nana finding an awesome costume at TJMax!

She has loads of books related to space and whenever we go to the library she insists on going to the non fiction section and chooses any number of books on the moon or the earth or the solar system in general.  She is adorable.  Her aunt Megan recently gave her an adorable DIY mobile that she has hanging over her bed and she is convinced that she will indeed go to the moon- sometimes her sister, me or her papa even get to come along in her scenarios.

When she sees the moon she comments on it's shape- sometimes it's a "fingernail moon" or a "half a cookie moon", or a "huge moon".  So cute!

This morning the local NPR had a segment on space travel- specifically whether or not humans should land on Mars.  I love the idea that children will grow up dreaming of doing something like that.  Such a sense of adventure and frontier.  And to top it off it rewards being smart and hard working as well as honoring science and problem solving.  Hopefully our girls will grow up valuing these things and longing to further human's understanding of the universe.  But for now, since they are 1 and 3, this is some of the space work we do over here.

I bought one of those Space Tubes and printed images from Google with labels of each item for a matching activity.  They both like to play with the figures too.  Made sure one of the astronauts pictured was a woman :)

We have a nice Melissa & Doug floor puzzle that we put together and I made up another matching activity with the planets.  It's kept all in a box with a placemat of the solar system that Gramma Deb got for Ada over the summer.  It's great because it has little facts on each planet and acts as a guide.  The long sheet is just office paper that I traced planets on and colored in with black marker.  They are connected and covered with clear contact paper.  The planets came from 2teachingmommies space unit.
Sorry I don't have any pics of the girls (Ada) playing with it.  Also, we realized on the first time we put it together that we needed to have a sun, so Ada made one (complete with solar flares) and I laminated it with all the planets and put it in the box.  The planets are labeled on the back so we can check our work.

Much of Ada's artwork lately has focused on space travel as well.  She has been having me label some of her watercolor paintings and it's so hard to do it justice with just a label since she tells a whole story while she tells me what each thing is.

Jupiter

Moon, Earth, Rocketship 

Part of the Moon

Nana, Ada, and I are all going to the moon on a little spaceship

In this one you can see the inside of the Earth, the "red part" of the Earth, South America (that one made me laugh inside when she told me, "It's kind of like America, it's South America"- all in a teacher tone), and the instruction on the bottom was "Don't EVER break the Earth"  There is also an "A" so we know who painted it. LOVE!

Perfect? ...HA!

So my lovely mother in law recently eluded to me doing everything perfectly.  Just to set the record straight, she is sweet, but totally inaccurate!

In case it brings anyone comfort to know some of my serious imperfections:

1. I am barely able to keep things picked up/ organized around the house.  *see #5

2. My craft area is a DISASTER.  Seriously.  Bad toppling over piles of random crap. Everywhere.  I am actually writing a post in my head of a before and after of the craft area- yes, I'm using this blog as motivation.

3.  I loose my patience.  I yell at my kids- well at the 3yo.  I'm not proud.

4.  I get into my head and feel sorry for myself and all my "white people problems"

5.  I am guilty of watching shows like Hoarders and Real Housewives of... which make me feel better about myself RATHER THAN actually working on the things in my life I want to be different- namely loosing clutter and figuring out what direction my career will take next.

6.  Did I mention procrastination yet?  PROCRASTINATION!

This list could go on and on, but those are the big ones.  I know we all have our own crap and that's some of mine.

Favorite Pinterest idea to date...

I have no good picture of my finished product, but this is the shelf I could easily clear off and consume in a month not to mention the pinto and refried beans.  

This is an awesome money saver, they taste delicious, and I feel like I'm giving the family higher quality food.  

Stephanie O'Dea has awesome slow cooker recipes and her instructions on how to make black beans in your slow cooker are great.  I cooked them for an extra hour and still felt like they were a little tough.  But after being frozen and cooked into some chili, they were some of the best black beans I ever ate.  I love this.  We eat TONS of beans around here and I'm looking forward to making these on a regular basis.