Light Prints

We really look forward to our monthly trips to the nearby art museum for their children's art program. They really do a wonderful job exposing even very young children to various forms of art. This month, we put cut-out shapes of black card stock on top of a special light-sensitive paper and then processed it outside in the sun to make these neat silhouette images.

I must admit, I helped Roo make hers this time. It was a little beyond her skill level, so I just had her show me what she wanted on it and approximately where she wanted it.

The tall shapes with the windows are grain elevators, because this is the prairie.

I didn't help Bean and Fish at all. They won't even let me sit by them when we go to the museum. But they totally get into it and love it and the woman who runs the program adores them (I love it when other people think my kids are great!)

So here's Bean's, complete with grain elevators, raccoon (on the bottom) and garbage can (on the right):

And here's Fish's-- I like his use of symmetry:

As I've done more and more art with my children I've rekindled the enjoyment I once had in it myself. I'm looking forward to years of doing art projects with them.

Food Friends

Yesterday I broiled a large slab of salmon, enough for two meals. This afternoon I spent some time on the internet looking for a good salmon pasta recipe. I found several marvelous ones, but I didn't want to have to run to the store in 100-degree heat with four small children just for leeks or heavy cream (call me lazy, I know!), so I went with the one for which I already had all the ingredients on hand.

It was basically a white sauce with pesto, grated parmesan (I used asiago), and salmon, served with penne. It seemed almost too simple, yet I had read online that pesto and salmon are a match made in heaven so I moved boldly forward.

And it was true: pesto and salmon belong together. Let it be written: ketchup and mustard, peanut butter and jelly, pesto and salmon. It was a yummy, easy, fast dinner. The Badger sang my praises. The kids lapped it up.

Salmon is rapidly becoming one of my very most favorite foods.

Hello, Beautiful!

In Which Birrd Reveals a Marvelous Cleaning Hint

Recently we decided that Tuesday was cleaning day at our house. Growing up, it was always Saturday, but the Badger does not work M-F. Tuesday is a better fit for us.

I'd been doing pretty well at the basic tidying/sweeping/vacuuming/dishes, but lately the bathrooms had been getting a little scary. Also, I wasn't doing any of the periodic deep cleaning that I used to do back when I only had a couple of kids. So the Tuesday cleaning strategy is that we do all the basic cleaning plus one extra deep clean each week. It's been working pretty well. The first week I attacked my stove and I couldn't believe how long it took me to scrub it clean. Note to self: don't ever let the stove go more than a year without being deep-cleaned again!

Yesterday we decided to thoroughly dust the living room. Which brings me to my marvelous cleaning hint. I have lots of silk plants. I've always hated how dusty they get and how hard they are to get clean. I bought that special silk plant spray once but I didn't love it. Yesterday I decided to try a method that someone mentioned to me once when I was out visiting teaching. It worked fabulously. It was fun and easy and didn't involve an expensive spray.

Put the silk plant in a large plastic bag with a whole bunch of salt and shake shake shake. Voila! Dust-free!

A word of caution: if your silk plants have poky ends, they may poke holes in the bag while you shake. Better shake outside unless you feel like sweeping up salt.

A kitchen-sized trash bag worked well for me. Then afterwards I just took out the kitchen trash and put the salty bag in as the new bag.

Happy dusting!

On Fire

My dad asked me today if we were going to take a break from homeschooling for the summer.

Well, that was my original plan when I mapped out our year. However, not long ago I attended a homeschool convention and now my mind's so full of all the wonderful things I want to teach them and all the cool projects we can do that I can't bear the thought of stopping for a minute. There's just not enough hours in the day to explore everything we want to learn about. Why should we stop for the summer?

Now, you may think that I sound like just another obnoxiously perky Holly Homeschooler, but I want you to understand something. I haven't always felt like this. Years ago I wasn't interested in sitting down and doing lessons with my kids (in fact, that sounded intolerably tedious to me) and I didn't want to give up any of my time in my own little world in order to work with my kids. My enjoyment of homeschooling has come gradually and has gone hand-in-hand with a real grieving process of giving up my own pursuits in order to give my children this time. But now I am on fire!

A big part of this is that Bean is finally old enough that he is catching fire too. More and more now he really wants to learn and he's a lot easier to teach than he used to be. After everything I've been through with him, that's so exciting that I want to capitalize on every second of it. Fish is now old enough too that they can do stuff together and that makes things much more fun.

And the convention! It was emotionally exhausting because it was so wonderful and stimulating and I got so excited about all the different curricula available but I had to balance that against my budget of both time and money. You would not believe all the awesome, fun, exciting books and CDs and toys and computer software and programs that are available now for homeschooling. I just kept seeing things that looked so fun-- the Badger and I agreed we're going to plan ahead next year and budget a thousand dollars so we can buy everything we want at the convention. I really think a key component of homeschool success is for the parent to have curricula that they're excited about. If the parent is truly enthusiastic, the kids will be too.

I only had a little money to spend, so in the end I went with only one big new thing for now, but I'm very very excited about it. It's the Artistic Pursuits art curriculum and it's really neat. The kids love it and so do I.

So no, we're not going to take a break for the summer. We're having way too much fun.

My Melon Basket

I was asked to bring a fruit tray to my cousin's bridal shower on Saturday. As I got thinking about what kind of fruit to buy, etc., I got the idea to make one of those melon baskets. It sounded like it would be fun. I was a little concerned that it might end up being a time-consuming pain, but I decided that I would plan on it being difficult and just enjoy it anyway.

There are lots of websites with instructions. They say the best thing to use is your pumpkin carving knives, so I dug mine out of the basement. They worked great. In fact, I was expecting to have to really saw away and so I was surprised at how easy it was to cut the watermelon. Much easier than cutting pumpkin. The cutting part went really fast.

The time-consuming part ended up being scooping out all the flesh and chopping it up. That took the better part of an hour and made a big mess, but it was fun. The kids got a kick out of watching me and eating small scraps.

A "Magic Eraser" took the black Sharpie lines off the basket easily. How did we ever live without those things? And despite the mischievous intentions of my curious children....

...my melon basket made it to the shower intact. I thought it looked pretty cute!

I wouldn't make one every day, but for a really special occasion I would definitely do it again. Plan on a couple of hours, but a fun couple of hours.

After reading a recommendation on one of the websites, I tossed the fruit with a mixture of the juice of one lemon and one lime along with a bit of sugar. I could taste a little extra zing to the fruit and I really liked it.

This Year's Summer Reading Challenge

We recently signed all the kids up for the library's Summer Reading Program. This year's challenge for me will not be trying to get Bean to read some books on his own. This year he is on fire. He has been so excited for Summer Reading and he is so excited to do it all on his own this year. He's reading like a maniac.

No, my challenge this year will be getting the Rabbit to sit still long enough to be read to so she can reach her goal. For such a highly socially interactive child, she oddly enough does not like being read to. Bean tries. I try. And you can see how she feels about it.

"Get me out of here!"

(She slithered off his lap right after I took that picture.)

She won't sit still even for a short board book. I tried today to read her an abbreviated version of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" (Like just saying, "Look, a blue horse! And a purple cat!") and it ended with her screaming and throwing the book. It was rather comical.

I just get such a kick out of experiencing the different personalities of my children. Just when you think you're an expert on what kids do and don't do at what ages the rules change. My first three kids all sat happily on my lap for stories at a very young age but my fourth one just won't have it. However, she is the first one of my children to sing recognizable tunes at age 15 months. Truly, there is nothing more fascinating than motherhood.

The Mango Adventure

So, I was at Sam's Club yesterday and they had these gorgeous golden orange mangos. $4.88 for a 5 lb box-- that's cheaper per pound than apples in my part of the world at this time of year. So I bought a box and brought them home.

And we fell in love. Sweet, buttery, delicious. The last few grocery store mangos I had eaten had made me think I didn't really like mangos anymore but with these my faith was restored.

The kids weren't that crazy about them, with the exception of the Rabbit. She thought they were the bomb.

So then, yesterday evening I was gone to a Scout meeting (I'm Cub Committee Chair) and the Badger was watching the kids. He had the Rabbit in the high chair where she was secure and he was working on something in another part of the house. Well, Mr. Initiative (Bean) came along and decided to extract the Rabbit without notifying Dad. The Rabbit then did what she does lately-- she immediately climbed on the table. Where someone had left the box of mangos. And she went to town.

When I walked in the door a few minutes later, Bean came running up to me and said "Mom-- bad news!"

Uh-oh. Don't you hate that when you come home and hear "Bad news!" You've just got to brace yourself.

"The Rabbit took bites out of the mangos!"

I couldn't help it. I busted up laughing.

Then I looked at the mangos. I'd imagined a couple of small bites in two or three mangos. No, the Rabbit took HUGE chomps out of five of them.

I apologize I didn't get a picture of the carnage. I didn't get to the camera until the Badger had already peeled them and put them in a bowl. You can't really even see the bites she took, but they're still very pretty mangos (I ate the one on the far right after I took this picture because it was the ripest and it was sooooo good!)

Anyway, I thought the whole thing was absolutely hilarious.

So go to Sam's Club and get you some mangos! Just keep them away from your table-climbing baby.

Cloud Coverage

I have in my possession right now a camera that belongs to my sister and is much better than my own camera. This is because I am borrowing it to shoot a wedding. This means I have to fiddle with it a lot and really learn to use it during the next couple of weeks before said wedding so that the bride will still like me after she sees her wedding photos.

So I took some pictures of the sky the other night. I was impressed. With my old film cameras and with my digital, pictures of the sky usually turn out pretty flat and dull. The sunset has to be really intense before it makes for a good picture.

I looked at the sky the other night and thought, "wow, lovely!" but also "can't get that on camera." However, I decided to try, and I was very excited about the results.

Crocodile, you don't really need this camera back, do you? :)

Finger Painting

It occurred to me the other day that it had been forever since we finger painted. So that's just what we did yesterday for Making Day. Despite the smocks and the outside location, I still had paint all over clothes and toes and noses and carpets, but I guess that's part of the fun. It was very washable paint, so in the end everyone was happy.

Note how Bean has one color on each finger. Roo made a big mix-y mess and Fish as usual tried to duplicate exactly what I did.