Drawing, Reading, and Projects

I kind of feel like that's what we show every week:  books and arts & crafts.  I guess that's not so bad, though.  A steady diet of books and art could make an interesting, well-rounded person.  

Some giraffes to compliment our learning about savannahs.  Every time giraffes come up, I tell my kids 3 things.  Those are ossocones, not horns.  Giraffes have the same number of neck vertebrae as humans.  And their tongues are purple to keep them from getting sunburned eating leaves out of tall trees.  That's about the extent of the knowledge I gained volunteering at the zoo.  

The downside of being able to check my library account online is that I know right away when we have books to pick up.  And since I always have more books I want to reserve, this inspires me to go get them as soon as they're ready, so I can put more on hold.  (Also, this is one of only like 3 places I go these days, so when I'm feeling a little stir crazy, it's a good outing for me.)  

I picked up books 3 times this week, and with another 7 waiting for me now, I will likely go again today or tomorrow.  

"Can I photobomb the books?" --Hannah

I sent Annaliese a pumpkin mask in October, and she sent me a picture when it arrived.  That seemed like a good deal to me, so I sent a Santa bear mask, and got another picture.  (I originally used this fabric to make a little bitty Christmas dress and bloomers for Brianna, way back when.)  

Face Time with Sam.  Hard to believe he'll be a veteran next year!  That makes me sound old.  But I'm so looking forward to seeing him after he gets out.  

Speaking of the adult children, Eli finally made it to the post office.  One of those boxes was his Halloween care package.  I also sent him a decorated small Christmas tree, a gingerbread house kit (hoping we might Face Time while we do ours), and a Christmas care package.  I'm guessing the other box is from Miss Adorable, since she asked me a question about customs forms recently.  

I've made a couple trips to the post office myself lately, and I've come to the conclusion that I did it wrong this year.  I bought gifts without thinking about how they would get to the recipients.  I'll do things differently next year.  

Art Projects For Kids makes it so easy for me to print the directions and the girls just magically have art done by the time I wander into the school room.  I keep meaning to do the next lesson in our DVD art program, but we've been mostly doing these instead.  

I'm having the girls save all their artwork, and I told them that at the end of the school year, we'll have an art show where they can pick their 5 best pieces to display.  

I fired up Crikey to make a Christmas card.  

I really like this design.  I meant to make the girls Christmas shirts, but I kept forgetting to ask them if they wanted cat trees or dog trees (I mostly Cricut after they've gone to bed) and now I feel like they'd only end up wearing them twice at this point, so why bother?  

Brianna made a card recently, too, and this was one of the "leftover" pieces from hers, so I glued it on the back of the envelop for mine.  

Which inspired me to glue some of the leftover kitties onto a gift I wrapped.  

From the colonial projects book, the girls crafted these horn book replicas.  

According to Global Art, these are Ilukeres Fly Whisks.  The people of Ghana made similar whisks from animal tails and gold handles to fan flies away from royalty in an Ashanti village.  

According to Grumman, these are cat toys.  

 Oh Grumman.

Jack wandered in while I was taking a picture of the girls with their bell drawings from the top of this post.  He was actually trying to get Grumman to stay upstairs, instead of bugging him while Jack was on the downstairs computer, hence the paracord.  

And our final project for this week; clay safari animals.  Hannah's lion on the left, and Katie's hippo on the right.  

I picked up a couple bags of books to process for Book First yesterday.  I did the book plate stickers last night while I watched a cheesy, formulaic, Hallmark Christmas movie.  My plan is to have the girls help me assemble the book packs tomorrow, since we don't have school.  The books will go out to 13,000 first graders from low income schools in our county.  

This is my 3rd or 4th time participating in the Book First sort.  Usually, there's a group of us assembling class packs in a big room at the library, #butcovid.  So, instead of class packs, we're doing student packs this year.  Schools are not in-person here, so students will each get an envelope with 2 books, an activity sheet, and a parent letter.  That's what we'll be helping to assemble.  I'm happy to have a way to volunteer from home.