I took shop class for a quarter in eighth grade, but other than that, I have never constructed anything out of wood! (Well, until yesterday's 4×4 raised bed.) I decided to pick a small project first and loved the Kid's Storage Step Stools I saw people making. Matt taught me how to use the circular saw and jigsaw and I finished building this in about 2 hours

The painting took me a little bit longer. At first I was planning on making three of these, one in each of the boys' assigned colors, but decided we really don't need three of these stools. SInce the boys would all be sharing this one, I went with all three colors (and I do love stripes!) I didn't have any painter's tape, but did have some washi tape on hand! I like the width of the stripes, but the tape doesn't stick to the wood quite as well as painter's tape. I had a lot of touching up to do since some of the tape would seep under the edges and bleed into a different stripe. From now on, I'll be using painter's tape and saving the washi tape for decorating my mail! :-p

This stool is perfect for our boys' bathroom. Without it, they aren't tall enough to reach the faucet by themselves or spit their toothpaste out without hitting the edge of the counter. They've decided to use the storage for bath toys, wash cloths, and whatever other random objects they're trying to hide from me.

I'm now addicted to carpentry and will be running through my long to-do list that I've made using Ana's site. Right now Matt and I have cut all the wood needed for a queen platform bed (since our cheap old frame officially gave up) and just need to get everything put together this weekend. I also have some shelves in mind, a little table and chairs for the school room, and maybe a linen chest for the foot of our bed. I'm sure you'll be seeing more projects on here soon!

This is also my very first carpentry project! It's not perfect (I mis-drilled some holes – woops) but it works. I know it's just a square box, but I'm proud of it. Tonight we're filling it with soil (our homemade version of Mel's Mix) and on Thursday the boys and I are planting our very first garden. I'm very excited about this project and hope it goes well! If so, we'll be adding another 4×4 box each year.

I did just a couple of things differently. I didn't have any interesting fabric that would have been large enough, so I decided to do patchwork (I also have four shades each of green, orange and pink to make bags for Heron, Raven and cousin A.) When I cut out the patchwork layer I used a string tied around a fabric marker as a compass rather than connecting dots. Then I used a stay stitch around the edge before I sewed the two layers together. I also have a bunch of paracord sitting around in different colors and thought that would make the perfect draw string.

It's not perfect, but I love how it turned out! Rhino likes it and keeps asking me to finish up Heron's so they'll match. He doesn't really cinch up the drawstring quite right, but he's catching on.

You should be seeing the rest of the set up here soon!

It wasn't an ornament I was especially worried about. I had moved all the other glass balls out of his reach. This was a cat holding on to an ornament, similar to this one:

He popped the ball off the cat and stuck it in his mouth. I saw he had it in there, told him to spit it out, but instead he chomped down on it and it shattered. I rushed to him and started sweeping little pieces of red glass out. I had my sights on two more pieces, but before I could get my fingers in his mouth, he closed and swallowed. I searched, but those two pieces were no where to be found. He sliced up the inside of his mouth a little bit and was pretty upset. Of course, I was nervous about what those little shards could do to his digestive system and called the emergency room. Calling was a silly idea because they can't dispense any medical advice over the phone, nor could they tell me whether or not I should come in. So I woke up Raven, packed everyone up, couldn't find Matt's new work phone number, left a panicky message with his orderly room, and headed for the emergency room.

He didn't seem to have any difficulty breathing, so it didn't appear to be lodged in his throat. The doctor squished Heron's belly and it didn't seem to bother him. He had some x-rays done (and was such a good boy in there!) The doctor told me that modern glass made in the US is coated and would show up on an x-ray. They didn't detect anything on film, so I guess ours didn't fall into that category or they just couldn't see it. I know that they were in his mouth one second, and gone the next though! So we were sent home and told to keep an eye on him for blood or vomit.

It's been over a week and so far he seems just fine, thank God! I think it's safe to say that everything passed without a hitch. Since Heron's notorious for putting everything in his mouth, and who knows what sort of trouble Raven will get into, I think we'll just pack away all the dangerous ornaments for a few years. In the meantime, I'm knitting up a bunch of cute, soft ornaments for our decorations.

This is my first stocking ornament:

I have quite a bit of red and white yarn and will just make a ton of these in different patterns until I run out. I'll also try some stuffed knitted balls, mittens, sweaters, etc. I saw some cute ice skates but I'd be afraid of what might happen with those paper clip skate blades!

I guess they aren't a perfect fit after all, but they are wearable! It's hard to size stuff like this when I don't have the wearer around to test it out. Thankfully knit work is stretchy!

Merry Christmas, Papa!

He wanted to practice cutting today, so I ripped up strips of colored paper and he cut them into smaller pieces. I drew some feather shapes on card stock and we cut them out together. Rhino glued the little paper pieces he cut onto each feather and I trimmed them down. I did the rest, gluing the feathers to the back of half a toilet paper tube (held by bobby pins until it dried.) I unfolded a paper napkin, folded it longways and then in half, inserted it into the tube, then drew eyes, a beak, and feet. I wasn't sure about marker on the napkins, but I don't think it's a big deal. The boys are getting a kick out of it and it'll be fun for each of them to have their own napkin ring for Thanksgiving!

Heron went down for an early nap today because he was super crabby, so Rhino and I had school time alone. We broke into the school closet to see what looked like fun and he picked the mini pom-poms. We talked about the letter B, I drew an uppercase and lowercase B on some card stock, and dotted it with glue. He placed pom-poms all around the Bs and we talked about letters that start with B.

Then we had to put the remaining pom-poms away by sorting them by color, counting them, and tossing them back in the basket.

Next Rhino picked pipe cleaners, so I made some Bs for him and let him play with the letters and some fresh pipe cleaners. We made curly-Qs and a heart, but he got really frustrated that he didn't know how to make a B of his own. I think there's a little perfectionist inside that kid because he does get really frustrated often when he can't do things just right or exactly like I did. The pipe cleaner fun didn't last too long. Oh well!

Next was some straw bead fun. We grabbed a handful of drinking straws and Rhino helped me cut them into about inch-long pieces. I got a piece of yarn in his favorite color and wrapped some clear tape around one end. He laced a bunch of straw beads onto the orange yarn and I tied it off so we had a pretty necklace!

We played a short game of Uno (using our king size Winnie the Pooh "My First Uno" deck!) It's the first time we've played a card game together and Rhino did pretty well! This will be a great game for learning numbers and colors as well taking turns and rules. He didn't like the rules part so much, but rocked with matching colors and numbers. He even won the game without me cheating!

We read books all day long, but also have set-aside reading times where I choose the books. Today we started the first book of Usborne's Very First Reading set. I'm really excited about this series because books 1 starts out with me doing most of the reading (the smaller print on the left) and my kids reading the bold, easier words. As we advance through the fifteen books, I'll do less reading and they'll do more. And the whole set is designed by language experts that know which letters and sound pairs when. Rhino is only three and not yet reading, but we started this book and talked about each letter in his section and what sounds they make and I sounded out each word. We'll be working on Pirate Pat, the first book for a while. But he loves the story!

We also played a lot with the Learning Palette. I've been waiting to use this for a while and Rhino just started catching on! Actually, I think I'll do a whole post on the awesomeness of the Learning Palette, so be looking for that next!

Today our school time was spent doing some art. We set out to make some wrapping paper for next month. I have some brown paper, wooden trees, and green paint and thought it would be fun to do printing. They were amused very briefly.

Then of course had to do hand prints instead of tree prints.

And then my plan fell apart. Rhino wanted to color in the whole paper instead and of course Heron had to follow along!

I hung it up to dry and we'll have some pretty green wrapping paper. Maybe we'll try again and print with red paint on it!

The boys did some puzzles and made some pictures with dinosaur stickers (counting dinosaurs, pointing out colors of dinosaurs, naming dinosaurs … Heron really likes dinosaurs lately!) Since we were playing with dinosaurs, I decided the boys could play paleontologist. I have a ton of dried beans sitting around, so I put a few different kinds in a box with some tiny dinosaurs (and a moose, dog, horse, etc for good measure) and handed the boys some spoons. For a little while they would dig through the beans with the spoons, scoop out the dinosaurs and put them in the bowl. Then they just decided to forget the spoons and have some fun with the beans!

For our reading time, Rhino asked to read about space. His favorite book right now is the Usborne Science Encyclopedia, which is awesome. The only thing is, it's a huge book for ages 9 and up. We look at it a lot, but he calls it his space book and really just wants to look at the astronomy sections. So today I grabbed some smaller, slightly more age-appropriate books: Usborne's The Solar System and Living in Space. Heron liked talking about all the planets but Rhino got a little bored. He really loved looking at the space station in Living in Space and we talked for a while about how different it would be to live in space!

We wrapped up with a little geography. We looked through a children's atlas and learned where we Grammy, Pop, Grandma & Grandpa live. I also pointed out Georgia because for the past few days we've been talking a lot about that state. Why? Because Matt just got his next assignment and that's where we're headed next! We don't leave until the end of April, but I'm glad we have this time to research the base and connect with people on Facebook. It will be a big change from snowy Japan, but I think it will be great to be back in the States and closer to family!

I'm going to attempt this NaBloPoMo daily posting all month again, so hopefully I'll stick with it and you'll be seeing more of us from now on. So … see you tomorrow!

Well, not like I invented them or anything. I modified a recipe/method (not necessarily for the better, but I think it worked out!) I found in Cookie Swap. I think they turned out cute and are a little more fun than just plain old sugar cookies!

Ingredients:

• 2-1/2 C all-purpose flour
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1/2 C butter *
• 1/2 C unsalted butter *(OR 1 C unsalted butter + 1/4 t salt)
• 1-1/4 C powdered sugar
• 1/4 C sugar
• 1 egg
• 1-1/2 t vanilla extract
• food coloring (gel)

Method:

1. Mix flour, baking soda (and salt, if used) in a small bowl
2. Soften butter, add to sugars and blend until just mixed.
3. Beat butter and sugar mixture for about 1 minute until light and creamy.
4. Add egg and vanilla and beat until smooth
5. Add flour gradually until just mixed
6. Divide dough into equal portions (in this example, 4) and color as desired
7. Shape each colored portion into a ball and flatted in a freezer bag or between cling wrap. Freeze for 2 hours.
8. Make an egg wash with 1 lightly beaten egg white and 2 T water.
9. Remove dough from plastic and stack the four (for example) layers together, using a egg wash between each layer.
10. Cut the round stack in half, paint the top of one half with egg wash, and stack the other half on top. Repeat so you have a tall wedge.
11. Rewrap in plastic and freeze for another 2 hours.
12. Preheat oven to 370 degrees
13. Slice into 1/4-inch rectangles and trim with a cookie cutter of your choice. Bake up the scraps too because they're still yummy! :-
    (I used circle cutters. Because I was slicing a wedge, the slices got smaller and smaller, so I just moved down a circle cutter size.)
14. Roll edges in sprinkles and place on a baking sheet.
15. Bake about 10 minutes or until lightly browned on the bottom. The tops shouldn't be discolored much at all.
16. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

I'm excited to play around with these for different occasions using different colors and sprinkles. Even the baked scraps leftover from the cutting out the circles are fun to munch. The boys think these cookies are "silly!"

I didn't go out and buy a fancy curriculum or anything. All I've done is loosely planned different themed weeks. Every week will be a new animal, color or shape, and letter or number. We're starting off Week 1 with cows, the color red, and the letter A. We'll just do whatever fun things I come up with that fit into those categories! Oh, and in case you're new here and curious, I have three boys, aged 3-1/2, 2, and 4 months. I'm just doing preschool with the toddlers.  

Day 1:

Today was an introduction. We got about an hour of "schooling" in before they lost interest and wanted naps. 

We started out the class with a talk about the day. We sang the days of the week and used our "Today Is" chart to label the day as Monday. We talked about the numbers 2 and 9 and put the date on as the 29th. I told them that it is August and they velcro'd the August label to the chart. We looked out the window and determined the weather is sunny and added it to the chart. I talked with them about the four seasons and told them that it is summer.

Then we sang a new song: Mary Had a Mama Cow. It was cute!

Mary had a Mama Cow, Mama Cow, Mama Cow
Mary had a Mama Cow, it's milk was white as snow.
Everywhere that Mary went, Mary went, Mary went.
Everywhere that Mary went, she drank the milk you know.
She took the milk to school one day, school one day, school one day.
She took the milk to school one day, and drank it all day long.
The milk helped Mary laugh and play, laugh and play, laugh and play.
The milk helped Mary laugh and play, because her bones were strong.

(Sung to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb, in case you didn't figure that out!)

After a few lines, they got tired of repeating after me. So when I sang the words, they just moo'd to the tune. We'll work on it!

We read the book: Meow Said the Cow by Emma Dodd. And had a lot of fun with all the silly animal sounds. I think Heron was a little confused because the animals all say the wrong sounds and I think he thought I was lying to him! He liked making all the sounds really loudly anyway!

I printed out a simple picture of a cow and we defined its parts. We talked about horns, hooves, the udder, and the tail. They also liked to tell me about the cow's eyes, ears, legs, etc.

I made some "A a" sheets and printed them out so we could identified capital A and lowercase a. They colored the letters in red. Heron was really intense about his coloring and wouldn't look up! While they were coloring we made "A" sounds and talked about A words (a-a-alligator, a-a-apple, etc.) Then Rhino wanted to stick the colored sheets to the fridge.

Raven sat with us in the high chair and played with a red block.

We talked about the color red and named some things that are red. Then I held up a big red bag (well, clean diaper pail liner) and let them loose in the living room to go find as many red things as they could and put them in the bag. 

They found red laces, toy fruit, blocks, fire engines, red trains, cups and bowls. Anything red they found went in the red bag. Then we played with some of the red objects.

We recited Hey Diddle Diddle together and I quizzed them on who jumped over the moon, who ran away with the spoon, etc. Rhino has a silly sense of humor and loves to answer all my questions very wrong, even if he knows the answer. We do this all the time (especially with mixing up names!) So he'd answer that the cat jumped over the moon, then would just laugh and say "no, that's silly!"

Then it was time for snack. It was simple. The boys had a red cup of milk and we talked about where milk comes from ("Milk comes from Mommy!" Well … yeah.) They had some red food: strawberries and pepperoni. 

We finished up with a bible verse, which has nothing to do with our theme, but I want to stick with it. They're in a Wednesday night class at church where they memorize verses. Rhino did really well for a while and knew quite a few, but it's been months since I've been doing them with him. So we started their book over and are working this week on 1 John 3:23 "Love one another."

And that was Day 1!

Day 2:

Every day I want to start with our "Today Is" chart with the day and the weather. The boys take turns with each label.

We read another cow related book today: Clorinda by Robert Kinerk. This book is a little long for 2 and 3 year olds, and they lost interest in the words about half-way through, but instead wanted to look at all the pictures and describe them to me.

We sang our song and recited our nursery rhyme. We'll review these each day.

Then we made some silly paper plate cow masks:

I just cut some ears out of paper and glued them to the plate, drew something resembling a cow face on the front, folded in the sides and hole-punched it, then tied it with some yarn. Rhino wanted an all brown cow with no spots. Heron wanted a green cow, then decided to add some orange (while it was on his face.) They pretended to be cows and did a lot of mooing!

We also talked about the color red and what items are red (Heron's shirt, today!) We reviewed the letter A, looked at our coloring sheets, and differentiated between "Big A" and "little a."

Then snack time (cheese) and we talked about cows, milk, and cheese. Then we wrapped up with our bible verse, adding hand motions. Day 2 down!

They weren't as enthused to "do school" today as they were yesterday, but once I got them at the table and got started, they had a good time! We're going to stick with cows, the color red, and the letter A all throughout the week before moving on to new things.

Day 3:

No photos today. I was feeling a little lazy/down. We still read a cow book: Adventures of Cow by Lori Korchek. I loved this one and it actually made me laugh out loud. The boys missed the humor, but really enjoyed the pictures. (Heron had to tell me "cow" every time I turned the page!)

It was pretty much a review day. We did our "Today Is" chart, sang our song, said our nursery rhyme, recited our bible verse, went over the parts of a cow, talked about A words, and ate a red/cow snack: red apple slices and strawberry yogurt. That was pretty much it for school, but the boys still had fun.

Day 4:

I didn't have all the supplies for the craft I wanted to do today, so we'll have to wait until tomorrow. We did read our book and sort of had another day like yesterday. We did our chart, reviewed our song/nursery rhyme/bible verse/A words, and mooed a lot.

We read Where's My Cow? by Terry Pratchett. I enjoyed this one, but I think it was a little creepy for a children's book. If I had read it ahead of time, I'm not sure that I would have wound up reading it to the boys. If you know his work, I guess it's exactly what you'd expect Terry Pratchett to do with a children's book, though! It was interesting.

We had a special snack that the boys were able to help some with: chocolate pretzels.

They put a bunch of pretzels on a pan while I unwrapped chocolate Kisses. They placed the Kisses on the pretzels.

We rearranged it into an A together.

Then melted the chocolate in the oven (300 degrees for 4 minutes.)

As soon as they came out of the oven, I pressed red M&Ms into the melted chocolate. 

They cooled in the fridge for an hour so they weren't gooey.

We chatted about milk in the chocolate, baby cows, the big letter A, and the color red while we munched.

Day 5:

By now you're probably tired of hearing about our routine! We did the same thing we do every day: the chart, song, rhyme and bible verse. We read Moo Who? by Margie Palatini. I thought this was really cute! It may have been a little long for my short attention spanned two year-old, but I really enjoyed reading it aloud. It was funny!

We didn't talk a lot about the letter A today, but focused more on arts and crafts. I put the toy cow we've been using on the table and asked the boys to paint a picture of it. Actually, I said "go ahead and paint the cow" and, of course, Heron took his brush to the toy itself!

I think Rhino couldn't have cared less about painting a picture of the cow and just liked playing with the paint. I couldn't get him to explain his picture to me, though (I'm really surprised he didn't tell me it was a train!) It was so cute that Heron would paint a little, look up at the cow thoughtfully, paint a little more, and then declared "COW" while he held up his paper. I don't see it, but I trust he does!

I wanted to make puppets earlier in the week, but couldn't find the paper lunch bags. So we picked up a new pack and made our cow puppets a little late. I found a cute template at DLTK's Crafts for Kids that we used.

We didn't do the arms and legs because there were enough little pieces for the boys to work with. I cut them all out, but the boys colored and practiced gluing and placing the parts of the cow. Heron's ended up looking kind of crazed (mad cow disease?) but they were still really cute!

We did a lot of mooing and running around with the puppets.

Keepsake

I also decided to do one keepsake project each week. Puppets and masks are fun, but I probably won't keep them around forever (and those masks have all ready been destroyed!) I thought it'd be nice to do something with their handprints, fingerprints or footprints. So this week they used red paint to make a hand print and when it dried I turned their print into a cow. I'll collect these animal prints weekly and have an end of the year booklet or something. i think they turned out pretty cute!

And that concluded the first week of preschool! We had a lot of fun with cows and dairy, using the color red, and learning about the letter A. Rhino will point out the letter A to me in books now, tell me the sounds that it makes, and tell me that certain words start with A. They both know that milk (and cheese and yogurt) come from cows. They'll pick out the red blocks or trains among the rest of the toys. It was fun and overall I think a success! Next week we'll continue with an animal, a shape, and a number!