heh heh heh!

...and WHOOSH! 

We're off!

Happy Halloween to all!

Felt Jacks

Have I ever told you that we keep oodles of felt on hand here?  Does everyone, maybe?  It's, well, a jack-of-all-trades (sorry).  It's versatile and easy to work with at all ages.  Sela and I whipped this up in a jiffy (really!!) last year when both kids were sick one day & we needed something fun to do. 

Sometimes we just put together fun faces, other times we play a game with it.  We created a die out of a block by cutting construction paper pieces to represent each of the four categories.  On your turn, you roll the die and put up the piece you rolled.  The first to complete her pumpkin "wins."

The feltboard is a homemade job, too.  Felt by the yard hotglued to a canvas from the craft store.  I've seen felt glued to an old cookie sheet, too.

A Bat, a Spider & a Cat Walked into a...

I saw these as pencil toppers last year, but I thought they'd make great finger puppets.  They're fun for playing around with, and also for playwriting!  Sharpen your pencils, hand out parts & GO!

We used pipe cleaners, googly eyes & glue, and for the black heads we made little black yarn balls.  Pom-poms would have worked, but we didn't have any.

Say it with Bones

Need a spooky art activity?

GOOD morning!

Monday's Mission: Be the Fall.

Cook a pumpkin.

Make Halloween sugar cookies.

Enjoy every drip, drip, drip out the window.

The ghostly moans were mostly groans.

Can you tell what this is?  These are my children, riding in the car, of course.  Of course!

Family life is full of silly fun.  Some evening, when things have gone off the rails at your house, try reading something silly like Six Sheep Sip Thick Shakes, and Other Tricky Tongue Twisters.  (Because silly is always better than the other way...)

And then, after a good night's sleep, why not make up your own?  At the back of the book we found a page titled "Make Your Own Tongue Twisters" -- so we did.

We enjoy Cleary's whole series, Words are CATegorical, for an entertaining and informative look at language.  Some of his titles include:
Dearly, Nearly, Insincerely: What is an Adverb?
How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear?: What are Homonyms and Homophones?
Cool! Whoa! Ah and Oh!: What is an Interjection?

I'm just discovering he has a website that looks like it might be fun to check out!  And I notice his official title is Word Nerd -- I knew I liked that guy.

 

There's Nothin' Like a Field Trip!

Sela asked me what "physics" was recently.  Well, my dear, it just so happens that we, Mamas, have been conspiring to take a field trip to talk about just that!  What better place to talk about physics than at the bowling alley?!  Dawn blogged the details better than I could -- check them out!  I'm just spreadin' the word about about how fun and fruitful field trips can be.

So, Sela's most recent question on the topic was (in a truly exasperated tone), "Ma-maaa!  When are you going to teach me PHYSICS?!"  This was funny for so many reasons: a) the phrasing; b) that she thinks I could actually; and c) because I had *just* nearly tripped over and tossed into the library bag an audiobook about Newton and his laws of motion!

We listened to it; we enjoyed it, even as it got complicated at parts.  I don't need for her (or me!) to understand all the nitty-gritty details.  We're interested -- and that's enough.  I've pulled out a couple physics experiment books I picked up at a library book sale, thinking we might be interested in exploring it some day.  So, it's some day.  Great!  I love living with curious people.

Check these out:
Isaac Newton and Physics for Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities by Hollihan
Janice VanCleave's Physics for Every Kid by VanCleave