Happy May! Let's Catch Up on April

I used to blog on Friday mornings, but I haven't been home the past few.  So once again, I've gone longer between posts than I intended to.  

My Easter/spring bulletin board.  Students made the butterflies, using watercolor on coffee filters.  

Gotta take pictures of the bunny on Easter, right.  

I feel like it's been a while since I showed Tuzi.  

I was requesting books about Native Americans, in preparation for a discussion of the original inhabitants of the lands we'll be passing through on our summer trip.  The NA craft book caught my eye and I added it to the batch with an evil smile.  I'm not sure why they hate it so much, but I really feel like it's good problem solving practice for the girls.  Pictured above is Hannah's twig horse (deer?) that refused to stand on it's own.  

And here's Katie's project.

It reminds me a little of a Swedish Dala horse.  It's fascinating to me that cultures around the world have similar crafts.  Someone shared Italian papercutting on Facebook recently, and I was reminded of papercutting in both China and Mexico.  

I was not delighted to place this order.  Uniform buying with 8 weeks of school left is not my favorite.  But Katie had either lost, destroyed, stained, or outgrown most of her unis.  The way things usually work, if she managed to keep these nice to the end of the year (the tan skirt is already stained) she'd have a huge growth spurt over the summer and not be able to wear them next school year anyway.  :sigh:  

Tried something new!  I made white bean/chicken chili, and we liked it.  Yeah for a new menu item in our boring repertoire.  

I know I missed pictures of at least 2 library piles.  

We had an anniversary.  

Josiah was going for "bird nest" cupcakes, which we've made with jelly beans in the past (and green coconut).  But the only jelly beans I found were red, so they turned out looking more like holly/Christmas cupcakes.  

The weather has been beautiful, so I took Grumman out for a stalk in the back yard.  

I don't think I have a shot of the finished product, but we made hermit crabs in ocean scenes (it was a 2 week project), and one of my first graders called his "Scrachy" for some reason, which tickled my funny bone.  

Processing some new books for the library.

At some point we'll have a biography of every president.  That day is not today.  Tomorrow's not looking good, either.  

I was struck by the size difference between Fiona (left) and Grumman (right).  He's so much taller and longer than she is, yet they're the same weight.  

I picked up some new snapdragons to fill in the hole between the middle yellow section and the right yellow section.  There's some babies growing there from seed, too, so it should fill in a bit soon.  I'm concerned we're going to lose the plant on the right this year, though.  They last about 3-4 years here, which is great, but they've started to look withered and dry, and they're not bouncing back.  

We read dinosaur poems for poetry month so I wore my dino skirt.  

Paul had Katie pull some weeds as a consequence for an issue at school.  

I took Tuzi's cage outside to give it a good cleaning, and Grumman was so offended that I was outside, and the bunny was outside, and he was stuck in the house.  

Fiona availed herself of the opportunity to check out the bunny cage, since the lid was open.  

Fortunately, Tuzi was still outside in the playpen when she did that.  

Not to be outdone, Grumman had to weird out over the playpen box.  

This is where I'm going to split the post so it doesn't end up being a mile long.  More pictures tomorrow.   

End of March

Whew!  I'm just *not* getting to the blog as often as I used to!  Maybe that will change come summertime.  In the meantime...

I got out and took a bike ride.  Not terribly long, but it felt good to be outdoors.  I stopped at one of the two Little Free Libraries in our neighborhood.  

Why is there a frog on the front of the biography bookcase?

Well you see, I did my first story walk.  Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?  

I did it with the preschoolers and kindergarten class.  

They had a blast chanting along with me and finding the next creature.

So, when this book came across my desk, I gave it the side eye while processing.  And sure enough, after moving the 590s to the little bookcase, this book was more visible, allowing the middle schoolers (and the 5th graders) to discover it.  And they acted like middle schoolers.  Which was not unexpected.  What was unexpected was when the younger elementary kids spied a biography of our president and started saying, "Let's go, Brandon!"  Wow.  Not at all what I expected from my 3rd & 4th graders.  Maybe I was "sheltered" but as a kid, I had no idea who my parents voted for.  I was taught to respect the office of president.  The middle schoolers also made derogatory comments about the biography, and an older sib in the high school plopped it on my desk, saying, "My dad wants me to check this out."  I'm half expecting to need a Book Challenge form.  Le sigh.  

Adoptive family virtual paint night?  That sounds fun.  So I signed us up, they sent us the materials, and I promptly forgot all about it on the actual Zoom meeting night.  Another sigh.  

I'll have to pull up a YouTube painting tutorial for the girls to do instead.  (At some point.  After the box of supplies has sat in a corner and mocked my parenting skills for a good long while.)

Grumman is still a beautiful cat (with a weird shoe fetish).

Tuzi bunny makes a rare blog appearance, chilling on my lap.  He's shedding like mad right now.  

After missing his first shoot of the season due to illness, Jack was thrilled to be out competing again.

My current car book and his latest shoot pin.  

So this is the project I wanted to do with my students.  I even painted up an example.  

We did it over 2 sessions.  Day one, they painted the black circles, using disposable toddler bowls.  I'll have to share some of the "part 2" pictures next time.

I crikey-ed up some bunnies to trace for a project.  I also don't seem to have an "after" picture for that one today.  Hmm.  

My If You Give a Mouse a Cookie dress.  

The K & 1st grade classes painted paper plate cookies in the library that day.  

Theirs were a lot more chocolatey than my example cookie.  

Whew!  I think we've more or less covered March now.  

Our Week

I hope you had a Happy Independence Day!  

I didn't actually fire up the Crikey this week, but I've been playing with (and saving!) design ideas for some of the various themes I plan to have in the library next school year.  I have a great planet craft in mind for our Space theme.  I even have a verse picked out to go with it.  

Our first big box of new school books has arrived!  I got all set up to do an unboxing video, and Jack came out, "Hey Mom, how do you spell...?" while I was filming.  I did stop and restart it.  I may edit at some point and share it.  I actually have our second box o'books sitting here unopened while I try to decide if I want to attempt another unboxing video.  

This shows step 2 in my process:  Stamp

Which, Grumman has to supervise, of course.  

Speaking of Grumman, the girls were having red vines one day, and he was very inquisitive to see what they were eating.  Fortunately, he's not a big fan of people food, although he does like to sniff.  

The girls made "fossil" fish from the Art Projects For Kids site.  

Tuzi got some outside time while I deep cleaned his cage.  

Which, of course, Grumman had to supervise.  

So, this was going to be an impressive photo of Jack doing pull ups, but by the time I got my camera open, he was done.  New pull up bar.  

I didn't even know Reader's Digest had made children's readers at one point.  

This one was remarkably well preserved for being from the '60s.

Library and Little Free Library books.  We've been exchanging duplicate books from the school at LFLs around town.  I went to the LFL site and found some new to us ones on the map.  This coming week when the school is closed and we can't work there, we'll drive around and find some more of them.  

I'm learning a lot about book care, and stickers, and what comes off and what doesn't.  

Books look nicer when you can read an unobscured title.  

This hardback book lost it's dust jacket some time ago.  

I unstickered as much as I dared, and I'm planning to create a title sticker for it on the computer.  

Another, smaller, library run this week.  

Hannah and Katie are still working on this puzzle.  They'd have been done if Grumman hadn't undone their work a few times.  I might glue this one once they're finished.  I don't see anyone wanting to assemble it again.  

blue jay drawings

We've been spending lots of time at the school.  There are other staff kids around most days (helps that the church has 2 parsonages on site) so the girls have friends to run amok with.  I like the idea of them having a semi-feral summer.  I spent a lot of time outside as a kid, and I think it's good for kids to have that experience.  

The school is closed this week, though, so we'll probably be around the house a bit more.  One of our current library books has the word "projects" in the title, so hopefully I'll have something interesting to photograph for next week's post.