Joyfully Weary

Jack and the Beanstalk is, by far, the fairy tale that has most intrigued our boys.  During the past month they have asked me to read it all most every day and, on their own, they started to act out the story - "fee fi fo fum" has become a common phrase in our house. I decided to focus their passion into a little crafting - no surprise there - and we created our own Jack and the Beanstalk scene.  staring Robin as Jack and a Green Lantern as the Giant Since this project developed over several days I don't have a picture of all our supplies but here is a list. boot box wrapping paper tube green and blue paint paint brushes green construction paper scissors green glitter glue hole puncher pipe cleaners 60 popsicle sticks tape white glue glue gun cotton balls easter grass We started by using our dish-wands to paint a wrapping paper tube green. Then we painted the inside of a boot box blue  I drew leaf shapes o...

A weekly reflection inspired in part by Bob Bennett's song "Small Graces". dot markers and a very happy little artist finding dinner (c/o maca) on my doorstep   pretty snowfall  an amazing night of worship clean(er) baseboards   excitement over a job well done   homemade guacamole   his "you can stop taking my picture now" face a weekend project 

This last weekend we took a trip a Target and it was glorious trip because several items in their dollar spot were 70% off - only $0.30! I like to keep to my eye open for fun painting tools and found a couple things that would work.  Of all of them, I was most excited about these dish-wands! I had been wanting to test them out for a while, hoping they would work similar to  Elmer's Sqeeuze N Brushes . I filled them up with a mixture of washable tempera paint and water and then tested them out on some old newspaper. It took awhile to get the paint to come out but they started to work like I hoped - victory!  Well not quite, because then things started to go wrong. Mini Man saw them sitting on the kitchen counter and he got excited - very excited - dish-wand-crashing-to-the-floor excited. Which left me with red paint all over kitchen and apologizing to my two-year-old for  yelling  raising my voice. Then, when it was time to paint, we couldn't get them to...

A few readers have asked me about the books we are reading for our folk and fairy tale unit so I thought I'd share some of our favorites. I feel like I should note that I live in a town with an amazing library. They have a very large collection of books (and other materials) and I am allowed to check out 50 items at time! They also have a very user-friendly, online catalog that allows me to reserve materials from the comfort of my couch and then pick up them at their drive-thru window. With it being that easy, we go through a lot books, which is great since Big Buddy seems to have an insatiable appetite. When I am planning any unit, my favorite place to start looking for books is this list of Caldecott Medal and Honor Books .  There are several folk and fairy tales on the list. Here are ones that we have picked up:  Saint George And The Dragon  This book is a retelling of a part fom  Spenser's The Faerie Queene.   The illustrations are beautiful...

In addition to our mirrors , we also decided to make some of the Beast's roses. In a few of the versions we've read, the trouble starts when Belle's father "steals" a rose from the Beast's garden. supplies: red paint, paper, red glitter, stalk of celery cut  near the bottom *this is not an original idea of mine but one i've seen  several child care  teachers  use 1 - dip stalk in paint and press to paper 2 - sprinkle glitter over paint *the glitter is optional - it just makes them "magic"  big buddy's roses mini man's roses And since we had the celery we also did a little osmosis magic.  filling our jars with water adding food coloring placing stalks and making predictions colored celery!