Glamming Up a Cell Phone

My kids have cheap "dumb phones" with no internet access.  On purpose.  We're cheap and overprotective like that.

Cheap phones break.  So Brianna and I went to the phone store to replace both hers and Sam's recently.

Sam loathes glitter.  Being the wicked mom that I am, I thought it would be really hilarious to glitter podge one of the old phone backs and have him think that was his new phone.

Disclaimer:  This project was done to a SPARE PART as a practical joke.  Please use caution when making decisions about expensive electronics.  This post contains affiliate links.

If you caught my Valentine Heart Shirts post, this will be familiar to you.  You need Mod Podge, and extra fine glitter.

I like to use a disposable medicine cup (that comes with elderberry syrup, cough meds, etc) and Popsicle stick to mix up glitter podge.  But I was running out of medicine cups, so splurged on colored shot glasses for Katie to use at the light table and will be pinching a few from her collection to use to mix my glitter podge in.

After mixing up the glitter podge, I painted it on.  It's a little gray and lumpy when wet.

But it's beautiful and sparkly when dry!

To make it less bumpy, I added a coat of plain mod podge to smooth it out a bit.

Once it was all dry, we placed the glittery back on the new phone (with the protective sticker still on the front of it) in the box and waited for Sam to come home.

He opened it up, turned it over, and was Not Amused.

Now, I'm not saying he's a drama queen, but he is laying in the middle of the road, waiting for a car to come hit him.

Through our giggles, we told him the truth, gave him the nice, plain back to his new phone, and Brianna has been using the glittery back on her phone.  She says she likes the slightly textured feel of it; it's less slippery than the plain backs.


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Our Week with 2 Birthdays

Despite having no school on Monday, I feel like we got a good deal accomplished, school wise, this week.  I still want to get back to the library, as we've returned all the books we checked out last time, but haven't been by when they're open to get new ones yet.

Sam ended the wrestling season with another medal!

We had a couple of birthdays over the long weekend.  Paul made the cakes.

Can you guess which day is Josiah's birthday?

Whoosh!

The day after Josiah's birthday is Brianna's.

Again, Paul made the cake.

She had some friends over to celebrate.

Because of all the cake over the weekend, we ended up waiting to do our Valentine math until Tuesday.

We focus on estimating, counting, graphing, etc.  But as you can see from Jack in the background, they're mostly interested in the eating part.

Our class mascot comes in and lays in the sunbeam that appears every day around lunch time.  I guess it's time to take down our heart mobile?

Miss Katie has started adding!  I've never liked teaching kindergarten, but it's actually going well.  She's sounding out CVC words and learning math, so I guess we're doing okay.

Now that Valentine's Day is over, I'm starting to think St. Patrick's Day.

So the girls made rainbows and then stuck glittery shamrocks stickers on their pictures.

We started our new language arts curriculum this week.  (I'm so mean; I made my kids do placement testing over the 4 day weekend!)  Here, we're playing a game together.  Even through my focus is on Jack and Hannah, there are some parts that Katie can join in on, like this game.

Other times, Katie works independently while we do it.  It's a meaty program.  I'm glad I decided to put some of our regular stuff on hold while we figure it out.  Here, we're using our letter tiles (affiliate link) to play phonogram blitz.

The kids are learning to look up verses in the Bible.  We're working on another GrapeVine Study (review coming soon!) and I love seeing them eager to find the next passage to read aloud.

I've shared before how much we love Spelling You See.  One of the fun things I noticed is that all the passages for this month have to do with black history.  We just finished week 21 in level D, and the last few weeks, we've learned about The Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Jack and Hannah are going to put SYS on hold for a little bit, because our big language arts package covers spelling, but I really, really love SYS.  Katie will continue working in her SYS book, which is level A.

Looking forward to another trip to Shriners next week, where the sockets for the new legs will be ready to test-fit.


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Our Chinese New Year Celebrations

I like that Chinese New Year is a 15 day holiday.  It's kind of like the Christmas "season" in that it doesn't have to all be done at once.  

I bought a pack of decorations on amazon, and one was this faux papercut, which I misted with water and stuck to the school room window.

I wonder what our Asian neighbors think when they see our front door.

At any rate, for us, CNY is a chance to get new shirts and take pictures.

Jack was born in Year of the Monkey, so this is his year.  He got a monkey shirt.

The girls (who had goat shirts last year) got more generic new year shirts (with the thought that I can pass them down), and Lukey's shirt reminds me of a red envelope.

Another important aspect of our family CNY traditions is new books.  Brianna is reading The Pandas and their Chopsticks.  

Excuse the bath hair.  The girls were reading some of their new books, including:  Please, Mr. Panda (Sam read this one and was like, "This panda is a jerk!"  He then read it aloud to me, pointing out the orca tears and the crackhead deranged lemur, and I have to agree with him.); A New Year's Reunion; and Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas.  

Remember when we participated in Multicultural Children's Book Day?  Well, I got to reading some of the other posts, and then I pinned a few, and then, well, I bought one.  And now I have a new Chinese province on my bucket list.  

Mystery of the Giant Masks of Sanxingdui (san-shing-dwey) was about an archaeological discovery in China that I had never heard of.  I want to go see them!  They're in the same province as the panda preserve, so of course I'll have to see that, too.  

We also added Year of the Monkey to our collection.  We have several of the other years already.  

After Shriners last week, the girls and I stopped at the Asian market on the way home and picked up an assortment of Chinese foods and snacks.  

These were the little "buns" Hannah came to us with.  The bag they gave her that day was so big, it lasted all the way through the 2 week trip in China, all through the 11+ hour trans-Pacific flight, and was finished off in Hannah's first week home.  The "cookie" like rice treats on the right are similar to the ones we were told to buy when we adopted Katie.  (The actual same ones were in the assortment, too, but my kids snarfed them before I managed to get a picture.  We also got longevity noodles, some other lunch noodles for the girls, and little gel cups.  And I got Brianna a bucket of mango boba balls, which she was delighted with.  

Taking pictures of Lukey has always been a challenge, but the kids are pretty good about helping me.  It's quite the production, with them calling him and standing behind me shaking a container of puffs, or giving him a puff and then hopping out of the way fast while his mouth is closed.

This time I managed to get one I'm happy with.  I think it's the best picture I've taken of him since November.

The weather was nice enough that we were able to play at the park for a while the day we took pictures.  Hopefully the park and library will again become part of our regular routine.

After naps one day, I got the girls dressed in their silks that I bought at the Great Wall in November.

By the time they were ready and I'd combed their hair, we were losing the light, but I got some pictures anyway.  

They're great sports about the whole thing, unless the sun is in their eyes.

Chinese New Year won't be officially over until 2/22, and we're still planning on a meal out at a Chinese restaurant as part of our celebration, but I wanted to share with you what CNY means to our family for now.  As the girls get older, I'm sure their preferences will help shape what/how much we do.  I can't give them the experience of growing up in China, but I can share my enthusiasm for Chinese culture with them and be responsive to their feelings about being Chinese.  

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Will You Be My Valentine?

One of the sweet boys from the Beijing trip has a family pursuing him.  That leaves these 4 special guys who still need homes.

Please consider whether Everett, Tristan, Aury, or Perry could be your sons.  Click on their names to see more pictures, read their ages and bios, and hear what their advocates have to say about them after spending 4 days together.

MAA is offering $6500 grants on all these boys!  Additional grants are also available to qualifying families! 

Please share this post so that their families can find them.  Because that would be the greatest love of all this Valentine's Day.  The love of a family.


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Our Week - with Lots of Reading

As we continue to learn about pollinators in botany, I figured it was time to refill the hummingbird feeder.

Hannah got to learn what a funnel is and what it does, as we put the sticky powder in and helped it pour down with a chopstick.

Daddy hung it back up for us.  We need to be more vigilant about checking to see if they've noticed it yet.  Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

Speaking of Paul, he's re-doing another one of the bathrooms.

Jack has been going through the Magic Tree House books at an alarming rate.  On the weekend, he can do 5 in a day.

I'm glad we've picked up lots of these over the years.  I just got him the Revolutionary War ones, since that's what we're learning about in history.  We need to get to the library again and see if any different ones have come in.

And I have been between book reviews long enough to pick up some pleasure reading myself!  I've read through the whole series a couple of times over the years, and I think I'm ready to do it again.
If you don't know Amelia Peabody, you're missing out.

Did you catch our Sketching at the Zoo trip this week?  It was a really nice day.

We've started another GrapeVine Studies lesson pack.  My stick figures are getting better all the time.  Review coming soon.

We did half a craft this week.  It involves pink clay, heart cookie cutters, and letter stamps.  I'm hoping I get motivated to finish it up soon.  I think they'll be cute when done.

Luke managed to get himself into a pickle, getting stuck under the rocking chair.  He's having a new strange symptom, although, for Lukey, strange is normal.  His hand or foot or cheek will be pink/purple and warm to the touch.  The other day, I was upstairs, talking to Paul, who was downstairs, and as I looked down at Luke from above, I could see that not only was one foot purple, it was swollen larger than the other foot, too.  Paul mentioned it to Luke's doctor at a recent appointment, but no one is sure if it's a neurological issue or a circulatory issue.

I mentioned in last week's wrap up post that we're going to be setting aside most of our regular stuff to focus on literature and language arts more intensely for a while.  This is one of the programs we'll be working on.  We did placement testing, and it was interesting to see some gaps, so I'm hopeful that this will help address those.

The big kids had no school on Friday.  Which means we had no school, too, since we follow their schedule, for the most part.  Bri needed a sports physical, so we got to get out and run some errands just the two of us, which was nice.

She hadn't seen the automated return at the library yet, and was duly impressed with the machine that scanned the bar codes as the books get sucked in on a conveyor belt.

Next week should be interesting as Paul will be taking another class and the big kids are off Monday, and we have 2 birthdays!


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