Very 1st Painting Lessons

I’m often impatient waiting for my kids to reach an appropriate stage to do x, y or z. It’s not that I want them to grow up faster, logically I know better. It’s just that I can’t wait to share more of my life with them and to expose them to all the possibilities the world has to offer. So I often go through daily internal struggles over the silliest of things. I feel this way with art, especially painting. I know Eleanor’s not ready to paint, but I am. So here’s my plan: break it down and expose her to one tiny element at a time. So far we’ve played with a variety of papers, touching them, crinkling them, tearing them. I’ve also let her play with dry paint brushes to her hearts content. I make available a variety of sizes to feel, carry and rearrange. At 13 months I now felt she was ready for the next step. Perfect for a warm day, we broke out the paint brushes, “no spill” paint cups and ……. WATER.

The paint brush immediately went into her mouth and then she painted her legs and the sidewalk until the water was nearly gone and the 21 month old neighbor boy decide he needed a turn. I remember Seth “painting” everything in sight when he was about 2. He loved to mimic Paddington in one of his books and paint the chairs with water. Even older kids enjoy painting pictures on the sidewalk, knowing it will soon dry and disappear.

Before the end of the summer I plan on stripping her down and letting her have a go at finger painting. But for now, I’m satisfied.

Caterpillars!

Let me introduce you to our new house mates and my new dining table centerpiece. Seth’s not really into naming his buggy finds but his Papa and I call them Thing 1 and Thing 2. I believe they are both Forest Tent Caterpillars and will become rather common moths in due time if all goes well. I would prefer to be raising beautiful butterflies like Kristen but it wasn’t really up to me. Seth found these little guys over the weekend. One he carried home from a picnic at the park and the other was found on the walkway to our front door. He was very intent on keeping them so I immediately did a little internet research. I found that Discover Life has a great little caterpillar identification system for North America. (If you’re in Europe, try What’s This Caterpillar?) I found a large jar in the basement with a chipped lid and dried out rubber gasket. I tossed the lid as it had quite a potential for slicing open skin. However, I kept the metal wire hardware to use to secure cheese cloth over the opening once the little guys are in cocoons. I love how it turned out and feel it makes for a mighty fine centerpiece. Taking photos through glass is rather tricky but I hope you enjoy these shots.

Even if I didn’t have kids I think this would make for a cool conversation piece. It appears that there is quite a bit of concern brewing over reduced numbers of various butterflies. Seeing as the little caterpillars have a better chance of survival in captivity than the wild, raising butterflies may in fact be very beneficial to the environment. I for one, am going to keep my eye open for any caterpillars OTHER than the Forest Tent variety. Interested in making a Caterpillar house of your own? Here’s some details you might be interested in:

• Pay attention to where you find your caterpillar. They can be picky eaters caring for only one or two types of plants/tree leaves. Test out a leaf with your caterpillar and you’ll quickly know if he likes it. Our little guys like oak and choke cherry leaves. It’s amazing to watch them devour a leaf in a short period of time.
• Be very gentle while handling caterpillars. They bruise easily and even a broken whisker could do them in. It is beyond me how ours survived my son’s little fingers but they seem to be doing ok. I would recommend coaxing them onto a twig or leaf to transport them instead of just plucking them up.
• Find a jar that has good visibility and enough room for the butterfly or moth to spread their wings and fly out when the time comes. A box with mesh sides would work as well but that takes more effort. An old aquarium would work wonderfully if you have one sitting around.
  
• You will need a lid once the caterpillars go into cocoons unless you don’t mind butterflies or moths inside your house. Caterpillars can’t climb glass but if you have a stick going right up to the top you may want to consider a lid right from the start. Cheese cloth, wire mesh, tulle, a lid with holes cut into it, you name it.
• Place a layer of sand on the bottom of the jar. It doesn’t need to be too thick, just cover any bare ground. This will help keep the humidity steady.
• Add a stick or two or three for the caterpillars to rest on and possibly build their cocoons off of would be helpful. It also adds quite a bit to the look. Thing 1 and Thing 2 like to sleep up on the sticks and then come down to the bottom at feeding time.
  
• If you so desire you could add additional elements as well, a nice rock, some star wars figurines. You get the picture.
• A caterpillar can devour a leaf in a very short period of time, so make sure to keep a steady fresh supply at the ready. In other words don’t try to raise a caterpillar that has a craving for leaves you can’t find within 50 feet of your door.
• You will need to clean out the leaf remains and caterpillar poop every couple of days at a minimum. Simply lift out the twig the little guys tend to rest on and replace the sand with fresh stuff. Trust me, you WILL see the poop.
• If you’re lucky after a few weeks and some hardy feeding your caterpillars will go into the chrysalis stage and a week or two later emerge with wings! What an amazing transformation. Nothing seems to compare to the magic of a caterpillar change to a butterfly or moth.

I can’t wait to see how our little guys go though the circle of life. It’s been fun just having them hang out with us. For more information and other methods check out:

• How to Raise a Caterpillar
• Butterfly School
• Caterpillar Nursery

For those of you doing this with kids, don’t forget the best caterpillar book of all time - Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We have a giant board book version that I just adore.

Anatole

Other than me getting a wicked sunburn we had an excellent weekend. Seth and I went on several adventures including picnics, parkS, coffee shops with play areas, walks and even a giant puppet parade. The puppets were giant, not the parade. Some had to be held by almost a dozen handlers. Our all time favorite activity of the weekend was going to the MIA on Saturday for a puppet show of Anatole and Anatole and the Cat. In case you’re wondering these puppets were normal sized. Following the show there was a scavanger hunt to find a mouse in a painting, a craft project of making an Anatole puppet and a “french” snack. Even without a 3 year old I would have enjoyed this. But it’s nice to have a youngster around as an excuse. I would have gotten odd looks otherwise.

For those of you that don’t know who Anatole is, he’s a charming mouse living in Paris. He is the lead character in a little set of books by Eve TItus geared at the 4-8 yr old set. Anatole makes an honorable living as a cheese taster instead of stealing his food from others. It was by pure coincidence that we had brought home Anatole and the Toy Shop back in December. It had been the hubby’s book as a youngin’. I had never heard of Anatole, but now find him quite delightful. Even though the original book was written over 50 years ago they’ve held up well. There was only one marginally sexist remark in the 1st book about the fathers going out to gather the food. Why can’t the mothers provide for their family I ask you? I’ve decided to chalk it up to a possibility in the animal kingdom. Am I kidding myself because I find the rest of the story so utterly charming? It’s better than Rudolf needing to get the women folk back to safety which makes me cringe but I still let Seth watch it. I consider myself quite the feminist but will these subtle messages influence my son or will my role modeling conquer all?

Sun Prints

Being at my parents always brings back memories. To top it off, they have a gigantic house filled with remnants of our past. They’re trying to pair down all the stuff in preparation for retirement and the simpler life. I’ve gotta tell you though, I almost don’t want them to. I’m proud of their efforts to reduce the material side of their life but I’ve also always been proud of how they never waste anything. All scraps and miscellany have always been kept for future projects. As we’ve always been a very prolific family when it comes to creative projects that means an unbelievable amount of miscellany. When I got the wild hair to do leaf rubbings, not only did they have the perfect materials, we ran across plenty of other inspirational items. One such was a package of Sunprint paper. Seeing as they use to sell these kits in their store which closed in 1981, this little kit was more than 25 years old. Would it still work? You betcha!

Although the kits are meant for ages 6 and up I thought we could give it a try. I’m guessing there are two reasons for this age bracket - danger of ingestion of the chemical paper and the patience needed to complete the project. Regardless it worked fine for us. As this was a spur of the moment project I, of course, didn’t read the directions very carefully and pretty much went from childhood memory. Luckily it all worked out OK in this area as well. For those of you that haven’t seen sunprints, it’s simply a chemical reaction to the sunlight hitting the special paper. We only made a couple due to that patience requirement I was talking about. That, and the fact that I didn’t want to go all gun ho only to find out the paper was too old.

The first step, in the shade I might add, was placing the paper on a board and something opaque on the paper. We then laid a small sheet of glass over the top to hold it steady. The kits actually come with plexiglass but our sheet must have been lost in the last 25+ years, so I used a small sheet of regular glass from a picture frame instead.

We left the paper for a few minutes until it turned white and then ran it under water to stop the development. I would recommend having a pot of water on hand to place the images in that you can then place a lid on to block out the sunlight. This would probably make for a more crisp print. After a few minutes under water we laid the images out to dry. As the papers dried inside I was a little worried as the whole sheet was turning blue. I guessed that the paper must have just been too old. Not the case! In fact the areas turned white by the sun then turned blue and the areas that were blue under the opaque items turned white. Obviously I had forgotten this part. We left the papers to dry on the counter and then flattened them under a heavy book and ended up with these:

Simple but still fun. This is not the best photo, still if I had read the directions and planned a little better the images would have been much more crisp. Now that I know the paper is still good, we’ll certainly be trying these again during our next visit. Maybe next time we can use some kitchen gadgets or get into my mom’s button collection to find our opaque items. I can certainly see Seth getting more into these as he gets older. It’s a nice little science experiment to boot. Check out the Sunprints gallery of images and tips page for more info.

A Stones Throw

Thank you, everyone, for your kind thoughts. I can’t begin to say how much I have appreciated it.

OK, time to start getting back to the real world. It’s going to take us a while to get back on track but I’ve got to start somewhere. Seth’s had a lot of time in front of the TV this week. Hubby has been out of town the last couple days and I’ve been trying to keep my little family from interfering with the full families mourning and of course, dealing with my own. I haven’t been completely successful with this venture, but I’ve been trying. We’ll be driving back home this week and I needed to get us on the path to recovery. Today we made a stab at some normalcy for an hour or so. I really enjoyed the escape. A couple of art projects (which I’ll post later) and some pebble tossing filled our time while Eleanor slept an unbelievable 3 hours.

As it turns out simply throwing stones is an excellent way to learn about all sorts of things:

• Is the stone big or little?
• Does it make a big or little ripple?
• Why does it make a ripple?
• Does it make a big kerplunk or a little one?
• Why? to all of the above

Give it a try sometime. You’ll be amazed. It was very cathartic.

Volcanoes!

Seth is beyond enamored with volcanoes. It all started with an Usborne book which came in a pack of books from a Scholastic book order. I ordered the pack because I’ve been searching for good books for preschoolers on skeletons and body parts, another of his interests. I thought one of the books in the pack might fit this bill nicely. However, once I received the set I realized it is intended a slightly older age bracket. Unfortunately, Scholastic book orders are, of course, delivered to the child at school so I was unable to review the book prior to Seth getting his hands on it. Otherwise I believe I would have removed the volcano book straight away due to a couple pages on Pompeii. Specifically, the photo of a plaster cast of a man who had perished by choking to death on ash. Lesson learned. I found myself particularly at a loss when Seth questioned me on this page and so I fell back on the actual text. I believe he was first drawn in by the sketch of a skeleton buried in ash and he made me read this page over and over with thousands of questions along the way. During the last couple weeks he has been engaged in acting out volcanoes erupting AND choking to death on ash. Completing the scenario is a scientist who fills the body with plaster and it comes back to life. Obviously the concept of death isn’t quite complete in my 3 year old’s mind. In an effort to refocus this creativity I suggested we make our very own volcano in the kitchen. Here I give you our version of Mt. Vesuvius, complete with instructions:

1. Let one inquisitive child pour baking soda in a cup set on a plate in the kitchen or out of doors. By no means should you measure, but if you need a rough idea a couple tablespoon should more than do it.

2. As the adult in control, pour vinegar into said cup. What! You didn’t pour enough? Just pour some more on top. Maybe 1/2 cup in the end? It depends on the size of your glass.

3. Watch with awe.

Next time maybe we’ll add food coloring for realism and dish soap to slow it down a bit. I’m going to hold off on the paper mache volcanic mountain for a bit though.

In the end, I’m glad we got the books. It’s been quite an experience. As for my original quest, does anyone out there have any suggestions for preschool appropriate books on body parts or skeletons? Preferably no death scenes.

Imaginative Sidewalk Chalk

We had a great weekend. I say this mostly because I feel we got a lot accomplished AND I still had fun with the kids. Maybe this was as a result of the warmer temps. We got a bit of spring cleaning in. OK, a lot of spring cleaning. This is amazing for us as we’re not known as tidy or clean people. I also got my hair cut, and I do mean cut. We’re talking instead of halfway down my back, it’s above my shoulders. Even though Seth knew I was getting it cut and came running when he heard my voice at the door he turned tail as soon as he saw me. Pouting with his head down he quickly went back to the kitchen where he told his papa that he was sad because I got too much of my hair cut off. I’ve had long hair since he was born, I guess I should have warned him better. As for Eleanor, she still smiled up at me but when I tried to touch her she would start to scream and move away. It took them a couple hours to warm back up to me. Looking back at this and considering I had to work at the office part of Saturday it’s hard to believe in the end I think it was a good weekend. Maybe it’s just that it started on a good note and ended on a good note, interspersed with some great fun. Kathryn came over Friday evening to watch Emma and work on some projects. Today Seth had a play date, I got to hold a 7 week old and Seth and I spent a lot of quality time together. Mostly we talked, researched and acted out scenes about volcanoes, his new obsession.

Another way we enjoyed ourselves this weekend was with sidewalk chalk. Steve drew (because he’s better than me at it) a rocket ship, a fire truck and a submarine on the front walk with chalk. Each vehicle had one or two seats with a steering wheel and/or control buttons. Incidentally, when we have our annual block party and the street is closed we go even further creating a large house with rooms and furniture in the middle of the road. Once these creations were completed to Seth’s specifications his imagination took over, directing us in how to act in each of these vehicles. There are very specific ways you know.

Build Your Own Flowers

Since the gardens are still buried in snow, this build your own flower kit will have to provide us with that Spring feeling for now. It accompanies our newly made felt board nicely and was a breeze to put together. I created piles of stems, leaves and pedals out of felt for Seth to arrange as he pleased. Actually, he preferred to direct me on where to put each item but it was still fun and we were still doing something creative together. The addition of a few clouds and a grass base pulled it all together. You might be wondering about the green stripe running from top to bottom on the left side. Well, according to Seth, it’s a beanstalk, as in Jack and the Beanstalk.

Note to self - just because your having fun with the rotary cutter doesn’t mean you have to use it for everything. Circles really mar up the cutting board.

A Great Weekend

My youngest sister and parents came to visit this weekend. I miss them so much. Although I’m the one that moved away I wish we could live closer. I treasure every visit. This particular one was full of fun, especially for the kids. Here’s a little run down on our doings:

• The Minnesota History Center - Seth’s favorite part was, of course, the rocket ship
• Breakfast at the Riverview Cafe
• Swimming in the hotel pool
• A quick trip to The Yarnery where I found even more knitting projects I’d like to do

The best part? When my mother presented Seth with this amazing cowboy quilt. Above is Steve holding it up for me so you can see the full affect. Below is the detail. Seth favorite part of the quilt? The green trim. His affection for the color never ceases to amaze me.

I was nervous of what his response would be when presented with my mother’s beautiful work. A 3 year old has no idea how much love goes into a project like this nor how to be gracious. I was therefore pleasantly surprises when he whispered an excited “WOW”. It’s quite busy but matches Seth’s personality perfectly. I adore the quaint retro prints and think she did a fabulous job balancing out the colors. It’s better than anything I could find in a store.

I’m now happy, tired and sad that it will again be a few months before I see them. However, I can’t end this post with out showing a few pics of Eleanor’s bathing suit debut.

What a beauty queen! So classy. The tongue especially.

Splish Splash

It reached the 50s today! Even though the next couple days are only supposed to be in the 30s I feel completely energize by today’s sneak peak at spring. It was good to get outside and completely let loose. Well, let Seth loose at least. He had a mighty fine time stomping in the puddles. Pretty sure his boots aren’t going to be dry for school tomorrow.

Go for a walk and don’t be afraid to get wet. There are always warm dry clothes to change into.

Update: I forgot to mention the best part. Seth wanted to play “dragon”. He would run behind me screaming “kachoo!” When I inquired about this strange noise he explained that he was “sneezing fire”. To which I responded something about breething fire and got a curt “no mommy, I’m sneezing fire!” Hmmmm…….